Oranges and lemons
by Capsaicin
Summary: Post season two. Reese, Crews and Tidwell, eventually Ted.
1. Chapter 1

Charlie looked up to the blazing sun and clasped his partner to his chest. His legs were still shaking but he told himself that there was no longer anything to fear, the world span correctly on its axis once again, Reese was back with him and as far as he could tell, she was unharmed. His jaw smarted from where Nevikov had punched him but Charlie didn't care; he liked imagining that he would later look into the mirror and know that the man who made that mark was no longer a threat. As Charlie's inevitable bruising faded, so too would every effect that Nevikov's malevolent existence had exacted on the universe. He hoped that any effect he'd had on Dani would be just as quick to disappear. He wanted to ask if Nevikov had hurt her but couldn't bring himself to let go of her even enough to be able to bow his head and see her face. There was plenty of time. Right now he was in the moment and this moment was one of the best he could remember.

So they stood there mute, like branches of two trees that had grown together over time, limbs wound so tight that neither knew which tree it had originally belonged to any longer. Neither of them cared; it didn't matter where they'd come from and what had forced them together, they had their own thing going on now.

Dani stood with her face buried in his shirt, just below his neckline, her arms around his back in a vice-like grip. She had so many questions that she didn't know where to start. A million thoughts had raced through her mind the second she saw him ahead of Roman's SUV, ready to trade places with her. Some of those thoughts had scared her almost as much as the prospect of never seeing him again once he slipped into Roman's car. She felt like if she started with any one of the questions at random, the others would swell in her throat fighting to get out first and make her choke. So she remained quiet and still and waited for calm to descend, using Charlie's heartbeat to regulate her breaths. Her eyes stung but she couldn't let him see her crying. She knew he could probably feel the wetness on his shirt where her tears soaked him with her residual fear, relief and her confusion, but letting him see was another matter entirely. She could feel his chin resting on the top of her head and his hands on her back, she suddenly felt like she could drift off to sleep like this with him propping her up, inhaling the fragrance of oranges mixed with dust and the smell of him, which she hadn't realized she knew quite so well until now.

They could hear a siren in the distance. It was approaching and Dani knew it was for them. Still neither of them moved a muscle. Everything felt a little surreal but all that mattered to her was that she kept hold of Charlie, so she did. Vehicles pulled up, doors slammed and she heard the familiar crackle and blip of police radio. She felt hands that weren't Charlie's on her shoulders. Somebody was draping blanket over her despite it being around 85 degrees in the orange grove. She immediately moved to shove it off.

"Detective Reese, Dani, let them take care of you." It was Tidwell's voice behind her. "C'mon, let go.", he coaxed.

Charlie moved his arms to his sides but didn't step away. Dani turned her head to see a squad car, an SUV, the ambulance, the paramedic with the blanket and Captain Tidwell looking conflicted and wringing his hands. "C'mon Dani, let go. You're safe now." he repeated.

"You should go with them, Reese." Crews said hoarsely, the first words he had spoken since they had been reunited.

Dani looked at Crews. Something unspoken passed between them and she took a step back, allowing the paramedic to lead her off to the back of the ambulance towards a wheelchair.

Tidwell noted the wet spot on Crews' shirt. He wanted to chase his woman, gather her into his arms and fuss over her but he had professional duties to perform and the semblance of neutrality towards all his employees to maintain. "Detective, are you hurt?", he asked Charlie.

"No Captain, I'm good.", came Charlie's reply.

Tidwell eyed the red welt on Crews' face. "Nice work here.", he said quietly. "How is she?" he added, nodding in the direction of Dani, who was protesting to the paramedics that she didn't need a wheelchair.

"Okay I think. But she hasn't said much.", said Charlie, as both men gazed at her thirty feet away and scowling. "You should go with her to the hospital".

"I want to, believe me. But we need to go back to the office and get this whole business straightened out. There's some explaining to do." Tidwell narrowed his eyes at Charlie. "You wanna tell me what happened here? What did you do to Nevikov to get him to let her go?"

"Nothing you wouldn't have done yourself." answered Charlie, holding Tidwell's eyes.

Tidwell wasn't so sure. He detected the distinct tang of competition. It had made him feel weak and inadequate that he had needed to send Charlie after his girl. There was no challenge in Crews' tone but he hated the fact that Crews had been the one to save the day. Too many times he felt he lost out to this guy, and although Dani was with him and not Crews, knowing that the other guy in her life was pretty dependable in a crisis put Tidwell on edge. "Well, thank you.", he managed despite his misgivings, clearly now not speaking to Crews as his boss. "You might want to call a lawyer.", he warned him as a token of his gratitude.

The paramedics had helped Dani into the back of the ambulance and hooked her up to fluids. She continued to grumble as they checked her over but she kept her eyes trained on Crews. He and Tidwell approached as the paramedics' attentions receded.

Dani felt a flutter of panic when she realized that Crews was going back to the station and she was headed in the opposite direction to the hospital. He could feel it and assured her that he would come find her later. Crews ushered Tidwell into the back of the ambulance with Reese. The Captain felt that procedurally, he should accompany Crews to the station; one of his men was going to face some pretty stern questioning after all. Charlie insisted however, wanting Tidwell to stay with Reese because he knew he couldn't be there himself. "I'm sure these nice FBI agents won't mind giving me a ride." he said sarcastically, gesturing over to the SUV with the shaded windows. He knew they wanted him.

As the paramedics squeezed past to shut the back door of the ambulance, Crews locked eyes with Reese and she smiled faintly. It was 'goodbye' and 'see you soon' and 'thank you' and something else only the two of them understood all in one. Tidwell saw it but pretended not to notice the charge in the exchange.

The ambulance drove off, kicking back a cloud of orange-scented dust onto Crews. He turned and smiled beatifically at the attending police officers and the two FBI agents, picking an orange from a nearby low-hanging branch and giving it a sniff as he walked casually towards their vehicle.


	2. Chapter 2

Dani sat back in the wheelchair as the ambulance rumbled out of Charlie's orange grove and onto the regular road. Tidwell sat beside her holding her hand.

"Dani, babe, am I glad to see you...you have no idea, I've been going crazy. How are you feeling?" he leant forward and hugged her, rubbing her arm when he withdrew.

Dani closed her eyes briefly and all she could see was orange trees. "I'm pretty tired, I guess.", she replied.

"Where were they holding you? Did they hurt you? Nevikov...he didn't, you know, assault y-."

"Jesus! No! Nothing like that. He slapped me once, that was all. Tied me to a chair in a basement. I had a hood on for most of the time."

The female paramedic, who was also sat in the back of the ambulance witnessing this scene between, apparently, a boss and his employee, shot Tidwell a look that meant that he should allow Dani to rest.

"Bastard." spat Tidwell, ignoring the paramedic. "So what happened? How did Crews get you out?"

Dani gave him the abridged version, that Crews had swapped places with her in Roman's car, that he had armed bodyguards and that Crews had turned up, alone and unscathed in the orange grove where they had found them, not ten minutes afterwards. She deliberately refused to speculate, or to give Tidwell anything more in case Crews was giving a different version of events to his questioners. It helped her that she really didn't know what had happened anyway, she would be interrogating Crews herself just as soon as she could.

"This makes no sense. No sense at all. Why would Nevikov hold you for nine days straight and then let Crews go almost immediately?", Tidwell asked.

"Tidwell, I don't know. Get down to the station and ask Crews yourself, if you want. Can we just drop it for now? I'm just glad to be alive." Dani said, exasperated.

Tidwell nodded, "Sure, babe. I'm sorry. Hey, close your eyes." , he patted the back of her hand.

Dani did not want to sleep but obeyed Tidwell nonetheless, just glad of the silence. Roman wouldn't have let Crews go without a fight, she knew that for sure. She had a bad feeling that Crews had landed himself in deep trouble and couldn't help but think that he had done it for her. All she wanted was to see him again. She replayed the sight of Charlie walking towards her, stony-faced, then walking right past her, telling her to breathe, their hands nearly meeting but not quite, since Roman had barked savagely for them not to touch. She wanted nothing more than to have held his hand. As they watched Roman's SUV drive away, she was haunted by the realization that she never would, that it was too late. That she was realizing something all too late. She couldn't even give that something a name just yet. She didn't dare, it terrified her. It was still too raw, but she recognized it, having known it once a long time ago. It hadn't worked out well then either. There was no plan. He hadn't thought further than the swap, further than saving her. She had felt sick to her stomach. Waves of nausea returned now that she recalled his red head ducking into that car, thinking he was gone forever.

She opened her eyes. Tidwell was still there, staring at her intently.

Crews had wisely evaded any questions on the way back to the office. He was skilled at that. He enthralled his companions by lecturing them on the finer points of orange cultivation instead.

Charlie walked into the bull pen to a standing ovation, word having travelled fast that Reese had been found, which aggravated the FBI agents and the hastily-assembled LAPD panel waiting for him. Asked where Captain Tidwell was, Crews reported that he had accompanied his partner to the hospital. Crews continued that without his boss there, he felt a little vulnerable, especially since the FBI were intent on sitting in on the debrief too. He made a not-so-oblique reference to union regulations and the fact that the last time he had found himself being questioned, it had cost him twelve years of his life and the LAPD tens of millions of dollars, and said he would like to call his attorney, to be on the safe side. They could not object. Crews found himself on the line to one of his old friend Connie's associates, to whom he did not need to introduce himself further than stating his name, who was more than happy to drop everything and come down immediately. If the guy's hourly fee was any indication, Charlie had just secured himself some major league legal representation. This move was both designed to protect Charlie and to buy him some time, to frustrate the group of people assembled in the meeting room next door. Although all this was working out just as he hoped, he couldn't help feel irritated that it would take longer than he wanted, keeping him from getting back to Dani as fast as he would have liked.

Charlie was relieved when the lawyer, Juventino Marquez, and an underling named Penelope strolled up to shake his hand firmly. He was slick, both in demeanour and his efficient manipulation of the law. Charlie briefed Marquez, and they sat before the panel forty five minutes later, with Marquez having objected to the FBI presence at an internal LAPD debrief straight off the bat. The FBI agents left, much to their apparent disgust. Charlie told the panel that he had swapped places with Reese and that there had been a struggle, of which his battered jaw was evidence. Crews admitted to striking Roman in self defence, injuring Nevikov somewhat, at which point weapons were trained on him. Charlie recounted that an argument had erupted between Nevikov and his men. In Russian. Crews reported that it had become heated, their weapons were drawn on each other and that Crews was then ejected from the car without explanation. Crews got no impression that the panel believed him in the slightest but Marquez backed him to the hilt, allowed him to take a few further questions and then made reference to the toll the whole episode have taken on his client, who had single-handedly liberated another LAPD officer without any direction or back up from the force. Marquez scared the hell out of them. The interview was over. It was explained to Crews that there would be an official investigation into the matter and as such, he should forfeit his badge and his gun while the results were pending. They took mugshots of his battered jaw and his knuckles under Marquez's close supervision.

Within ninety minutes, Crews was in the elevator shaking hands with Marquez and Penelope once more.


	3. Chapter 3

Charlie peered through the glass panel of the door that the kindly nurse had directed him to. He could see Dani's tiny frame laying in the hospital bed, her forearm that was not attached to the I.V. shielding her eyes. She was alone.

He knocked softly in case she was sleeping and pushed the door open a crack. Dani looked up and was out of bed tugging the I.V. trolley across the floor before Charlie was even in the room.

The hospital gown made her look even smaller than she really was. Dani got within a foot of her partner and let fly with her fists, hammering his chest, slapping his upper arms, catching him off guard and yelling something unintelligible. She may have been small but she was disproportionately mean. "Son of a _bitch_! Of all the _stupid_, _half-assed.._. Sonofabi-". It wasn't the reception Charlie had anticipated. Once he had come to his senses after the sudden ambush, he grabbed her at the biceps and pinned her arms to her sides in order to defend himself. She was furious but he was stronger. With no outlet for her anger, Dani began to tear up in frustration, still struggling violently despite his tight grip.

"Reese! _Reese! _What the..?! Cut it out! Be careful, you're gonna rip the drip out of your arm!", Charlie urged her.

As her thrashing subsided Dani let go an involuntary sob, which she hated herself for instantly. Charlie pulled her to him and held her tight and they stood entwined just as they had in the orange grove. She quietened somewhat.

"Don't you _ever_ do _anything_ like that to me again.", she almost growled.

"What? - save your life?!", Charlie asked innocently.

"You didn't save my life, Crews, you _traded_ your life for mine." She looked at him sharply. "Why would you _do_ that?!"

Charlie shrugged.

"How could you be so stupid?", she stared at him.

He shrugged again. "It was either you or me."

"And if Roman had killed you?"

"But he didn't. I'm still here.", Charlie smiled with his eyes.

"But he easily could have. How do you think I would have dealt with that?"

"You would have known that I did it willingly. And then you would have spoken to Ted and I like to think you would have helped him scatter my ashes in the orange grove.", said Charlie warmly.

"_Idiot_. You had no idea what you were going to do, did you? There was no plan."

"The plan was to get you out of that car."

"And then?", Dani was losing her patience again.

"Reese, he wanted me, not you. You got caught up in this because of me, it's been going on for years and it's not over yet, but for you it is, I won't let it happen again."

Dani considered his words. His face was now deadly serious.

"He paid for what he did to you."

"How? How did he pay, Crews? What did you do?", she asked him warily.

"I killed him. Quickly. I only wish it could have been slower, more painful.", Charlie replied calmly.

Dani was shocked. She had never heard him talk that way. His jaw was set and there was a look in his eye that she had caught a glimpse of before on occasion. He wasn't trying to hide it today though. It unnerved her.

"_How are you even standing here?_ Does Tidwell know? Crews, you could go back to jail..." She was suddenly very afraid for him.

"Nobody knows. I just want you to understand that I'll never let anyone hurt you ever again." Now it was his turn to get emotional. She saw his eyes grow glassy and his Adam's apple twitch.

Dani went back to hugging him, trying to process what he had just told her so plainly. She felt him clinging to her, rubbing her back through the thin hospital gown, suddenly aware that she wasn't wearing a whole lot.

They broke apart and stared at each other a while. Dani was more confused than ever. Charlie began to rummage in his jacket pocket and drew out the orange he had picked earlier. He placed it in her hand, something almost bashful about the gesture.

Tidwell stood on the other side of the door, watching the pair of them through the window, holding two hot cups of coffee that stung his fingertips. He had been there a minute or so and was dismayed to have seen his girl in Crews' arms for the second time that day. What was with all the hugging? He resisted the urge to clench his fists and spill the scolding coffee all over himself.

Dani looked down at the orange in her hand and then back up to meet Crews' eyes. He smiled gently at her and she felt such peace that she had to remind herself that he had just confessed to having killed a man today. Nevertheless, she recognized that she really wanted to kiss him. Charlie felt her staring at his mouth and made the slightest move towards her before he became aware of a presence at the door. He guessed it was Tidwell. Charlie took her head in his hands and planted the kiss that had been destined for her lips firmly on her forehead.

"No, no, no, _no!_" said Tidwell under his breath, seeing Crews bend his head towards Dani, wanting to burst into the room and toss the coffee at Crews' goddamned face. He breathed a sigh of a relief when he saw that a brotherly kiss on the head was the extent of it. Brotherly, see, nothing to worry about, just two partners who had experienced a close call, he told himself. Still, he wanted to break it up all the same.

Charlie noted that Dani was looking a little perplexed once he let her go. He moved to the side a little, to allow her to see past him to the door. "Tidwell", she exclaimed, like she had forgotten he was even in the hospital with her. She hoped he hadn't overheard her conversation with her partner.

Charlie opened the door to let Tidwell and his coffee enter. "Captain", he nodded.

"Crews. All done at the station? I would have got you a cup but I wasn't expecting you."

Crews took the hint. "I was just going, I just dropped by to check on Reese.", Charlie explained. "I'm taking some leave while they run an investigation.", he glanced at Dani when he said this. "I turned in my badge and my gun."

"They suspended you?!", Dani was startled, wondering how much of what Crews had just admitted to her the LAPD already suspected.

"That will just be standard procedure, right?", Tidwell half asked, half stated. He still had no idea what had transpired. "You want me to make some calls?", he offered.

"Thanks Captain, but I already have my lawyer on it.", assured Charlie. "So...I'll leave you guys to it. Reese, I'll call you."

She watched him pat Tidwell on the arm in a manly fashion and skip out the door, barely looking in her direction in his hurry to leave.

She squeezed the orange in her hand.


	4. Chapter 4

Tidwell watched Dani staring down at the orange pensively.

"C'mon, be a good patient, get back into bed.", he chided.

Dani scowled. She wasn't going to able to tolerate this for long. She had been tied down and locked up for over a week now and a hospital stay was never a cheering prospect, especially with Tidwell as her unofficial nurse since he was wholly unsuited to it. Besides, there was nothing wrong with her. Her split lip was a little sore and swollen but already healing, she had some bruising and chaffing on her wrists and arms where she had been bound, but other than that she was physically fine. What she really wanted was a hot shower, fresh clothes and her own bed. And to speak to Crews.

Tidwell sat next to the bed, then on the side of the bed and when she nudged him off, he took to wandering around the room, fiddling with the blinds on the window until a piece of plastic came loose in his hand and he shoved it in his pocket guiltily like a kid. Dani rolled her eyes at him. "Quit fidgeting, Tidwell."

He settled and tried to engage her once again on her experience with Nevikov, about Crews. She wasn't forthcoming with too many details. He asked if she had been scared. "Sure, of course I was.", she admitted, understating it enormously. "But it became clear that they weren't going to kill me unless they had to, they wanted Crews, not me. And I knew he'd come through for me.", she said calmly. Tidwell's stomach roiled. Dani recounted past encounters with Nevikov that she and Crews had worked, both the cases they knew he was involved in and the ones they only suspected he was responsible for. Nevikov was infamous and Tidwell had already heard plenty about the man but the LAPD had yet to make anything substantial stick. It would take a whole lot of resource to build a case thorough enough to dismantle his operations, which reached beyond state and national boundaries and was presumably why the FBI were involved. Tidwell hoped to hell that his detectives hadn't blundered in and fouled up some massive undertaking of theirs. He could really do without heat from the Feds right now. Still, now that Nevikov and co. had taken one of their own, the LAPD would search high and low for the bastard and Tidwell would see to it that he personally played a great role in his downfall. He would show Crews. _And_ Dani, for that matter.

When it was clear that Tidwell was not going to extract any more information on Nevikov or Crews' kamikaze rescue mission, they went back to waiting impatiently for the doctor's visit. Dani was just about to ask him to go get more coffee and a newspaper or something when the pristine-looking woman in a white coat arrived. They had run tests and Dani was basically fine, the fluids they had administered already would have tackled the dehydration, but they wanted her to stay in overnight nonetheless given the circumstances (and that Dani was LAPD).

"Doctor, that won't be necessary.", Dani stated. "I'd really like to go home. All I need is to be home. I want to discharge myself."

The tiny Asian doctor with perfect skin made a screwy face.

"You just got through telling me that there's nothing medically wrong with me...and I feel fine. A girl needs her bath tub, doctor, you know that.", Dani reasoned, appealing to the girly girl she had assessed the doctor to be.

The doctor was relenting, Dani could tell. She looked between Dani and Tidwell. "Can I ask what your domestic circumstances are?", she said.

"This is my...partner, Kevin.", Dani said quickly. She hated the term 'boyfriend' and felt way too old for it. One of the good things about being with Tidwell was the fact that she hardly ever had to define their relationship to others, she never had to introduce him to people since the whole thing was clandestine. The doctor nodded. "You'll take me home and stay over with me tonight, right?", Dani said raising her eyebrows at him.

"You bet, babe." Tidwell smiled. He loved that she had referred to him as her partner in public, he loved that she had used his first name - perhaps for the first time ever, he loved that he was able to take care of her and he loved that she had just invited him to stay at hers this evening, since they almost always stayed over at his place. He puffed his chest and felt like he had grown an inch taller.

The doctor was convinced. She said she would have someone come by with a release form for Dani to sign and that she could leave once her current drip bag, which was nearly empty, was done. All this, on the proviso that Dani got plenty of rest, some decent meals and generally took it easy for at least a week. Tidwell assured the doctor that her advice would be heeded and that Dani would be signed off from work for the foreseeable future in any case. This last part was news to Dani, who looked at him sharply.

"Great news, babe.", said Tidwell, rubbing her arm. He stood there with a goofy look on his face.

"What?", asked Dani impatiently. "Why are you grinning like that?"

"So, uh, are you going to call me Kevin from now on?", he inquired sweetly.

"No, Tidwell, I'm not. That was for her benefit.", Dani said.

"Oh.", he replied.

"_'Oh' _what? It worked, didn't it?", she shrugged.

Tidwell was slightly disappointed but on balance, he figured it didn't matter _what_ she called him, as long as she called him.

"We should swing by the store on the way back. I bet you don't have any groceries, do you?", he mentioned.

The image of walking around a grocery store with Tidwell and their collective cart was really freaking her out. They just didn't do stuff like that, it was far too domestic. "Nothing that will have survived since I was last home. Anyway, we'll go to yours, right, like normal?"

"Uh, okay, it was just that you said...", Tidwell was confused.

"Yeah, that's what I said to the doctor...", she started, looking exasperated.

Tidwell now felt deflated. Both of the little victories that had made him think they were turning a corner, that perhaps this thing with Nevikov could actually bring them closer together, had been snatched away almost immediately. Those things she said were all to manipulate the doctor and he felt slightly foolish for leaping at them. It was clear that Dani intended to continue just as before.

He loved Dani and as much as he tried to crank things up a notch, the more she seemed to resist. She appeared content to see him in secret, spending maybe a couple of nights at his place per week, maybe a rare weekend when their shifts at work miraculously synchronized. They ate together, slept together but they never really 'did' stuff like normal couples in the early stages of a relationship. They avoided each other at work where possible and hardly ever socialized with others, due to the fact that most of their friends and acquaintances belonged to the cop community. Coming out as a couple would be career suicide for her and awkward at best for him, management would raise eyebrows, especially since he had not declared a relationship with his younger subordinate. He was supporting her in her studies for the Lieutenant's exams - her jealous peers would only smell a rat if they disclosed their relationship and Dani made rank shortly after. Then there was the drink thing, Dani staying sober meant that socials and parties were not exactly her scene. He was helping her with it and she was doing well but he wondered if her kidnapping would trigger another binge, or worse.

Yeah, being with Dani was sometimes an isolating experience. But those were the conditions that came with the relationship and he sure as hell wasn't ready to give it up. It wasn't that she didn't show him affection, there had been plenty of that since they got together, in fact he could hardly keep up with her at one point. Things had cooled lately though, since before she went off on the placement at the FBI. He wasn't sure what he had done but some of her barriers had been creeping back up again. One of the most rewarding things about her had been the way in which she had softened towards him, the distance she kept with most other people melting slowly and crumbling bit by bit, making him feel incredibly special. _She_ was special. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops, he couldn't believe his luck that a woman like Dani would look twice at him. The inability to brag about it nearly killed him. The fact that there still existed in the force a certain macho culture, where the guys talked openly about their exploits and appraised the finer qualities of their female colleagues together made it even worse. He knew that these attitudes were unhelpful in the modern workplace and that Dani would be especially pissed if she knew, but guys would be guys, it wasn't serious and although he was the Captain and had swallowed every human resource manual they threw at him, Tidwell still lived by guy code when he could. Tidwell could allude to 'his girl' but could never identify her as Dani Reese and bask in the kudos it would earn him. It sucked. More than sucking, he had to bite his tongue when the guys mentioned Dani in that context, and he practically had to staple his hands to the desk when he heard people gossip that Reese and Crews were so tight they just had to be fucking.

He could see why they might say that. In his more paranoid moments he even suspected it himself. There were times when she didn't want to see him and he often wondered if she was with someone else. The most likely candidate was Crews. He imagined that Crews worshipped her much like he did. But Tidwell knew better than to even ask. When he was feeling more secure and rational he dismissed the idea. Crews was a screwball, everyone knew that. Dani had a lot of time for him but they were partners and they worked well together. Partners was a different thing, you often saw your partner more than your family. Even if his feet and breath stank and he was clinically insane, you came to love your partner through sheer familiarity if nothing else. That was what it was with them. That was why Crews, who really was a nut in any case, had gone after Dani and flouted every rule in the book. She was going home with him tonight and that was all that mattered.

Still, it bothered him that when they were leaving the hospital room she was nearly out of the door when she span around and grabbed Crews' orange from the bedside table. He had never seen her eating fruit in all the time he had known her.


	5. Chapter 5

They stopped off at Dani's apartment briefly, so she could pick up some fresh clothes and her spare cell phone since hers had been confiscated by Roman's men some days before. She freshened up in the wash basin and gazed longingly at her bathtub. It wasn't going to happen, she had to get out of here. Tidwell made himself comfortable in her kitchen but she made no invitation that they should just stay there for the night. In fact, she stood at the door wearing her sweats, hair in a ponytail, with an overnight bag, impatient to leave.

At his place, Dani was asleep almost as soon as she hit Tidwell's sofa.

Tidwell set about cooking, keeping a careful eye on her as he chopped the vegetables. He would make her his mother's spaghetti and meatballs, a good, home-cooked meal to get her on the road to recovery, just like the doctor said. He had noticed that Dani was looking a little thin and drawn. She appeared to be sleeping soundly. He was just so glad to have her back. The past week or so had been real tough on him too. Man, he wished he could have a beer to celebrate. He looked over at Dani again. Not a good idea, he concluded.

Dani had set the orange in front of her on the coffee table but had made no move to eat it. He eyed it suspiciously.

/

He woke her up a while later to eat, her face crumpled and grouchy, but she was soon congratulating him on his culinary skills. He loved taking care of her. She was normally so fiercely independent, railing against anyone who tried to help her with anything, no matter how good their intentions. He guessed that part of it was down to being a woman in the LAPD, he had seen it before, female officers were often at pains to show that they were as good and as capable, if not more so, than their male colleagues. He didn't understand why she needed to demonstrate that attitude in her personal life also. Tidwell didn't want her to act the little woman but he wished she would sometimes let him in more, show him that she needed him once in a while. Tidwell had married three women and considered himself a man of experience, but he had never been with a woman quite as complex as Dani Reese.

Dani ate silently but voraciously, she hadn't realized she was so hungry. She was mulling over the dreams that had beset her catnap. Roman. Specifically, Roman telling her that he had killed her father, watching him die in pain. She recalled the gleam in his eye as he told her, previously frustrated that Dani wasn't showing him enough fear and then immensely entertained that he had something up his sleeve that would hurt her more than his fist. She wondered how she was going to tell her mother, if it turned out to be true. She also wondered how her mom would react, if the tyrant really was dead and gone. She didn't know how she felt about it herself but she hated that Roman had seen that it affected her.

Crews had said he would call. Dani wondered when and stared at her phone on the table beside her.

"Expecting to hear from somebody?", asked Tidwell.

"Just wondering what to tell my mom about where I've been the last ten days.", she lied. She knew he wouldn't like it if she told the truth. He often got pissy if Crews called when they were together and off duty.

"Maybe just tell her you've been working overtime? There's no need to worry her now you're safe.", he replied.

"I guess.", she agreed. "I'll check in with her later all the same."

Tidwell patted her hand as he rose to clear the dishes.

A while later she made the call from Tidwell's bedroom while he straightened up the kitchen. Her mother gave her some trouble about not being in contact but the excuse about working hard lately seemed to get her off the hook. Dani's mom knew all about punishing police schedules through having to bring Dani up almost single-handed since Jack was absent so much throughout her childhood and either sleeping, drunk or in a foul mood when he was at home. She told her mother that she would pay her a visit sometime during the next week. Dani would wait until the cut and bruising around her lip had improved in order to avoid any difficult questions. Neither woman made any reference to Dani's father. Her mom finished up the call by asking her daughter, in Persian, if she was okay. The foreign tongue had always been used between them for secrets, intimacy and sometimes conspiracy against Dani's father. Somehow mothers just knew when things weren't right. "I'm fine, mom.", Dani replied, as much to convince herself as her mother.

Dani hung up and thought about her mom living alone in the family home since her father had vanished. She had clearly been worried at first but had actually flourished without him. She went out more, she saw friends, she cooked and she chatted to Dani freely in Persian when she visited her. Small changes had taken place around the house, little touches on the décor here and there, modest bouquets of flowers in vases, things like that. It seemed lighter, more airy and kind of...liberated at home now. Dani wondered if she should even mention her dad ever again, or whether she should just allow her mother to assume that the ungrateful son of a bitch had left her. She was doing fine without him and she deserved some happiness, however late in the day.

Dani checked her phone display again. Nothing from Crews. She decided to message him, as Tidwell catching her calling him would only set him off acting weird. Dani thought it strange that contacting her partner suddenly felt illicit and like something she should hide from Tidwell. But she did it all the same. Her message was short and to the point, telling him that she had been discharged and was at Tidwell's, who was playing nursey. She said she would call him tomorrow. Dani put her cell down on the bed by her side. She hadn't said all she wanted to say to Crews, but then she really didn't know what it was she actually wanted to say to him. Making contact would be enough for now. Her phone buzzed and beeped almost immediately. Crews was glad she was out. The rest of the message was a succession of smiley faces, something he had just learned was possible on a cell phone. Twelve years was a long time in technological terms and Crews was only just more capable with phones and computers than her mother was. She laughed to herself, feeling a whole lot better now she had heard from him.

Dani headed back out to the sofa and Tidwell, who was watching a news bulletin. He pulled her up next to him and put a burly arm around her shoulder.

"Feeling okay?", he asked casually.

"Yeah."

"How's your mom?"

"Mad at me for not stopping by or calling in over two weeks. But otherwise fine.", she replied.

"Well, maybe you could spend some time with her this week?", he tried tentatively, knowing what was coming.

"What do you mean, this week?", she turned to face him fully.

"Dani, c'mon. You know you are going to be signed off, right? They won't let you back on duty until you've rested up and seen the counsellors. I don't need to tell you that, babe.", he sighed.

"But I'm fine! Look at me - I'm fine! I don't need a pysch evaluation! What is _wrong_ with everyone?", Dani protested.

"Babe. I said _counsellor_, not shrink. C'mon. It's the same for you as for everyone else. You won't be allowed back on duty until they've seen for themselves, done the paperwork, ticked the boxes - you know how it is. Just go with it, treat it like vacation. Jesus, I wish someone would give me a free pass out of that place for a week, but no, I got to go in and have my balls busted over this mess with your partner."

Dani pouted. There was no getting around this.

"You can hang out around here as much as you want. Tidwell's gotta work but I'll be home evenings, babe.", he smiled.

"If you think I'm staying here all week like a housewife then you are wholly mistaken, mister. Not gonna happen. You can drop me home tomorrow before work."

Dani grimaced but he was glad that at least she had accepted it.

"And Tidwell?", she added, "_Don't call me babe_."

They both fell silent and went back to watching the news. When it was over, Tidwell tried to gently broach the subject of her kidnapping once more.

"Enough already! Can't you take a hint? I just want to forget about it - if you'll let me.", she snapped.

"Fine. Subject closed.", Tidwell muttered to himself quietly, as she got up sullenly.

"I'm going to take a shower.", she said, stomping off to the bathroom.

/

It was possibly the best, and the longest, shower of her life. The hot water felt good and she was glad of the respite from Tidwell's attentions. She was finding him totally overbearing. Truth was, she just wanted to be alone tonight but had decided that staying over with Tidwell was for the best. She was no way near as '_fine_' as she was claiming and there was only one thing that was going to change that. Dani badly wanted a drink to blot all of this out. The urge was driving her crazy, she felt like she was itching inside. She knew that putting Tidwell between her and alcohol was the only way to keep her from the bottle tonight. Dani knew that he had nothing in the apartment and that he wouldn't let her out of his sight for a second. Pain in the ass though he was tonight, Tidwell would save her from herself.

As she got dry, she examined the mottled purple and brown of her bruises. She had gotten away easy. She thought about the red mark on Crews' face. He was the one who had made a truly miraculous escape. She still didn't understand how he had managed it. She was going to ask him to explain just as soon as she could. She knew he didn't lie to her but she suspected that he often kept the whole truth hidden. Dani remembered his eyes in the hospital when he confessed. He wasn't hiding then. She knew she had to do all she could to stop him going back to jail again.

Just then there was a knock on the door. "Dani? You okay in there? Can I come in? It's just that I um, I need to pee." Dani rolled her eyes.

/

A short while later they went to bed. Typically, now that Dani was finally in a position to get some much needed sleep, it refused to come. Tidwell sensed that she was awake too.

"Dani? What kind of stunt do you think Crews pulled to get you both out of there alive?", he said thoughtfully.

"I don't know. We didn't get round to talking about it when he was at the hospital.", she lied.

"What's to bet that it was something batshit crazy that's gonna land me with some serious paperwork? Fucking lunatic."

"That _fucking lunatic_ just saved my life. And he happens to be my partner - do you mind?", Dani was getting mad.

"Consensus in the bull pen is that your partner should have been in the nuthouse, not Pelican Bay.", Tidwell recounted.

"Crews is not crazy.", she defended, "And you know you shouldn't listen to a thing they say in the bull pen."

"Maybe you have a point. They also say that you and him are a whole lot more than partners. I have a hell of a time not putting them straight on that one."

"They say _what_?", Dani asked.

"There's this rumor going around that you're an item. You can imagine...", he was interested to see how Dani would react to this.

"Imagine _what_? Exactly?", she persisted.

"Jeez, I don't know, Dani. I guess people just figure a handsome guy like Crews, his hot little brunette partner, both single - as far as they know anyhow, because we both know that you are _definitely_ not single..." at this he gave her a smirk.

"You think that Crews is handsome?", she asked him, amused.

"Sure. Don't you?", he probed.

"I guess, in his own way.", she granted him that, "I had no idea he was your type though."

"I guess with you being so tight and all, all that time you spend together, long shifts, stake outs...well, it's natural - a guy and a girl - it's just biology, right?"

"Biology? Is that why I'm with you? Because of biology?", she was surprised at his bullshit.

"No, that's chemistry too, babe.", he winked at her. "All I'm saying is, people just call what they see. And he obviously has a crush on you."

"He does not.", Dani objected.

"Oh you think so? So why did he just walk into the Moscow State Circus today and put his head right between the lion's teeth?"

"Because he's my partner.", Dani stated.

"Yeah right. Either he's carrying a torch bigger than the Statue of Liberty or he's crazy. Probably both. The bull pen called it, Dani. Biology, pure and simple."

"Biology my ass.", she replied dismissively.

"Yes. Your beautiful ass probably does have something to do with it." Tidwell reached down and gave her a playful slap there.

Dani rolled her eyes and shook her head at him.

"C'mon. He's never tried anything with you? Not even before _us_? He must have done, Dani. Ever bought you flowers? Taken you to dinner? Copped a feel while you were struggling with a perp? Not even first base? Second? And you, you've never even considered it? It has never even crossed your mind?", he looked at her like he didn't believe her.

"No, Tidwell. Not everyone thinks like you do - clearly." She rolled over and showed him her back.

Tidwell considered the conversation. She had revealed nothing but she was mighty defensive alright. The most she had spoken to him all day and it was a conversation about Crews.

Dani also played back their discussion in her head. Yeah, she had considered it. At length. She thought back to earlier today in the hospital when she and Crews had nearly kissed. There was no way she was going to get to sleep now.


	6. Chapter 6

Dani awoke the next morning feeling as if she had spent the night as an errant sock tumbling on high spin at the laundromat. She had barely slept at all, as the dark circles under her eyes would testify. She had spent a long time thinking about Crews. Crews and what he had done, then Crews in a romantic sense. And then Crews in a sexual sense. All kinds of scenarios and contexts, both wham-bam-thank-you-m'am and hearts and flowers. She couldn't stop imagining what it might be like with him. And it bothered her, it really did. Dani was almost afraid to see him again, partly because she was scared of what he might tell her, the trouble he might be in, and partly that he might be able to tell what she was thinking, to see vestiges of the fantasies she had been having written all over her face. It was embarrassing. But she also knew that seeing him alone again was also _all_ she wanted. Today, if possible. They had a lot to talk about.

When she had tormented herself into exhaustion over Crews, she had finally drifted off into fitful sleep that was haunted by vivid images of Roman's glowing eyes, the sound of his dogs barking and men shouting in Russian, the sensation of being held down, paralyzed and suffocating in that hood, the heat of her own recycled breath stifling her. Her father's face, drunk and in a rage, then still, uncharacteristically passive, out of reach now, impossible for her to hurt him any longer with her words and impossible to finally make him love her. Over and over she awoke with a jolt, covered in cold sweat and shoving off Tidwell's arm from her waist because it felt heavy and oppressive and she could barely breathe. She would compose herself, then fall asleep again only to repeat the process. In the end, staying awake and guiltily concentrating on Crews while Tidwell snored softly beside her was the only thing to bring her calm.

Tidwell was already up, she could hear him in the kitchen taking a phone call. It was work. Although he looked like he was the lazy type, Dani knew how hard he truly worked. Feeling bad on account of her wandering mind and for mainly being a bitch to him the previous day, she decided to go see him and make nice. The aroma of coffee was calling her and she followed the trail like a zombie pursues the living. She got to his sofa and he smiled a greeting and gestured that he was winding up the call. All of a sudden the smell of oranges hit her nostrils and it transported her right back to the memory of holding on to Crews for dear life. A snake of orange peel rested on the coffee table. Tidwell had eaten the orange that Crews gave to her. She felt the disappointment like a kick in the guts.

"Morning babe. Hey, oh, hey, you look _tired_. Are you okay?", he said rushing over, concerned, kissing her cheek.

"Rough night.", explained Dani, "I appear to be too tired to sleep, which is interesting."

"Here, I'll get you some coffee", he said, rubbing her back.

"Tidwell, did you eat my orange?", she asked him casually.

"Oh. Yeah. Breakfast. Did you want it? I'm sorry, I didn't think you liked fruit. Or breakfast, for that matter.", he said scooping the skin off the table.

"No, it's okay. It smells good, is all.", she lied.

"It _was_ good. Real juicy. Hey, would you ask Crews if he could bring some into the office? It looked like he has plenty." Tidwell wondered.

"You shouldn't encourage him where fruit is concerned.", warned Dani, "And I don't need two fruit obsessives in my life."

Dani realized that she had wanted to keep the orange. If not to eat then what for? She wasn't sure but it had felt like a precious object when Crews had dropped it into her palm at the hospital. There would be plenty of other oranges but this one had been special. She couldn't express that to Tidwell though, who was standing right in front of her handing her a coffee cup.

As she sat and drank her very elixir of life, Tidwell mentioned that he had received a call to say that, if she was up to it, Dani's presence at the station to give her statement on the Nevikov affair would be appreciated. It would also be used as part of the investigation into Crews' irregular conduct. Tidwell had initially thought that it would be a good idea to get this done early on so Dani could relax and take the rest of the week to recover but looking at her this morning, he now wasn't so sure if she was ready. Dani, however, insisted, wanting to make her statement while she was still in a position of ignorance and unable to implicate Crews in a murder that nobody else seemed to know had taken place yet. Tidwell relented and agreed to drop her home on his way to work so she could get dressed and make her way in by herself.

/

By eleven thirty, Dani was showered, dressed in jeans, a white t-shirt and a gray blazer and calling Tidwell to let him know she was on her way. The restorative powers of a shower had again made her feel a little better, in addition to her second and thirds cups of coffee. She wasn't looking forward to this but she wanted it over already. She made sure that her statement focused on her capture and the things she saw, heard and felt while being held. She reported the claim that Roman had made about murdering her father. This sent shock waves around the room, Jack Reese still being a bit of a legend in LAPD folklore. It was all news to Tidwell, who was sitting in as her Captain, wondering why she hadn't told him any of these details the previous night, again feeling sidelined. Her father had died and she hadn't even mentioned it to him. He began to worry for real about the state of their relationship. Something wasn't right with them. Something wasn't right with Dani.

Dani laid it on a little thick about the psychological abuse she had experienced at Nevikov's hands, saying that he had taunted her with the prospect of pain and death. There was no question that Roman had been a particularly vile customer but given that Dani was not particularly physically injured, she wanted to be sure that the balance of opinion would swing in Crews' favor should they gather evidence on Crews' actions. She knew that there were still those within the force that wanted Crews gone. They began to ask her about her partner. About why Nevikov had been so interested in him, about what happened leading up to the point when they found him in alone in the orange grove. Dani stuck to her recollections as they were, knowing that Agent Bodner would back her up. She essentially pleaded ignorance. They wanted to know if Dani had seen Crews since. She said that he had dropped by the hospital yesterday very briefly and Tidwell spoke up to say that he had been present too. The interview was concluded. Dani was thanked on behalf of the LAPD and the organization's regret at her ordeal was expressed. Dani was notified that the LAPD's in-house counselor was expecting her directly after as follow-up to this debrief, so that Dani could discuss the more personal implications of her kidnapping if she so wished. Tidwell hadn't told her about that part. She shot him a look across the table.

On the way out, Tidwell called over to her. "Detective Reese, may I have a word?"

They entered his office and closed the door.

"Dani, _your dad_ - why the hell didn't you tell me?!" he exclaimed.

"I didn't want to talk about it last night. I still don't, but it seems that I'm due with the counselor, so I don't really have a choice.", she replied.

"I didn't know about that, I swear I didn't. They're just trying to take care of you anyhow, just like other people I could mention. If only you'd let us." he grumbled.

"And I've told you that I don't need their concern. I'm fine. Now back off!"

"You were just told that your father was killed and you're _fine_? You spent nine days tied up and beaten by a psychopath and you're _fine_? Yeah, you better run along to your date with the counselor, she's going to have a field day with you!" Tidwell knew that his girlfriend had daddy issues but this heart of stone routine was wearing thin already.

Dani looked slightly taken aback and said nothing.

"Look, I'm sorry. I'm just worried about you, is all. I know you can handle yourself Dani, but there are limits. You wanna grab some lunch after you're done with the counselor? We could talk.", he offered.

"No, I'll take a rain check." She shut him down.

"Tonight then? My place? Or dinner out somewhere?"

"I think I'll just stay home. Alone. I need to sleep."

"Okay, well I'll call you." he thought that maybe she did need some time alone but was scared that left to her own devices she would continue to run from this and wind up out of her mind in a bar again. He knew her better than she thought and he wasn't going to let that happen.

/

Dani and the counselor, Dr. Patricia Klein, or Patty, as she liked to be called so as to seem approachable and sympathetic, were acquaintances of old. Patty knew about Dani's past, her time in Narcotics, her disastrous undercover operations and her subsequent drug and alcohol issues. Seeing Patty regularly was a condition of employment when Dani was first assigned to a active duty again upon joining Homicide. Her past and this latest adventure meant that the Reese file on Patty's desk was now quite thick.

Dani hated being judged and assessed in this way. It was always stressed that Dr Klein was a counselor, not a shrink, but Dani couldn't see much of a difference and refused to be forced to engage with her by her employer. Dr Klein was far too proactive and asked way too many searching questions. She gave her the bare minimum to complete her reports but it didn't stop Dr Klein from trying to delve deeper. Dani was like her pet project. She asked Dani if she had felt violated by Roman, whether he had made sexual threats, if she was having bad dreams or flashbacks, how she felt about her father and the possibility he was dead. Was Dani still sober? Was she experiencing temptation to start using again? How would she rate her mental health on a scale of one to ten? She asked about Crews, whether Dani felt any guilt that he had put himself in harm's way in order to rescue her, how she thought this was going to affect their working relationship in future, whether she would like to transfer to another partner. Did Dani feel worthy? Dani took in all she said but didn't give her much in return. Their consultation over, Dr Klein agreed that Dani should be signed off for a week and should return for a further discussion after that time when her fitness to return to duty would be considered. Dani closed the door firmly after her on the way out, considering her mission accomplished.

/

That afternoon she called Crews. His voice was warm and welcoming, he was as pleased to speak to her as she was to hear him on the end of the line. She asked him what he was doing and he replied at length about some research he was conducting into getting solar panels installed on the roof of his house and how amazing it would be to take a shower powered by sunlight. Like it would give him special powers or something. She took comfort in the fact that the pressures of the past few days hadn't seemed to have changed him any. She asked him if she could come over that evening.

"That depends. Are you going to hit me some more?", he asked.

"No Crews, I think I've calmed down a little. No violence, I promise.", she replied.

He sounded enthusiastic, although she conceded that 'enthusiastic' appeared to be his natural state so she shouldn't necessarily assume that it was in any way connected to her. She volunteered to bring pizza.

A few hours later on her way to Crews' place Dani stopped at the lights, in the midst of one particular fantasy which involved her and Crews ripping each other's clothes off seconds after he had invited her into his house. She wasn't expecting this to happen and she didn't think she could handle it even if it were to happen, but she indulged it all the same hoping to get it out of her system before she came face to face with the man himself.

Her cell rang and since she was still stationary she answered it. It was Crews asking if she had picked up the pizza already. She had and she looked down at the boxes in the passenger seat. He was just calling to say that he had realized that they hadn't discussed pizza toppings.

"It's okay, don't panic. _Just breathe_. I got you pineapple.", she assured him.


	7. Chapter 7

Charlie was standing there at the door when she arrived. The last twenty four hours had seemed like weeks to him, while the last two weeks had dragged like months. Having her off on placement with the FBI was bad enough but knowing that she had been taken by Nevikov and had become embroiled in Crews' mess had been unbearable. He realized that caring about another person so much was a jail of another sort.

She saw him watching her approach and felt slightly self conscious. She hoped this wasn't going to be awkward, she wanted more than anything for them to slip into their old ways together, it was the only way she could be sure that things were going to be alright. As soon as she was close enough he reached out and took the pizza boxes from her. She looked him up and down. Compared to his usual standards, she would say that Crews looked very relaxed, if not slightly dishevelled. He wore a black t-shirt under a washed-out olive green zip up hoodie, his jeans looked too big for him and he had no shoes or socks. There were the rusty beginnings of a beard on his face. Not the clean cut Crews in the sharp suits that she was used to day in, day out. She kind of liked it, he looked quite manly. Images from the daydream she had been having in the car flashed through her mind and she cleared her throat to force them back into the box in her head marked 'wrong'.

"So. How is suspension treating you?", she asked as he ushered her inside.

"Good, so far." he smiled, "but I'm hungry. Do you mind if we eat right now?"

Dani shrugged no. They went to the sofa and Crews pulled open the boxes and began devouring the pizza. He was thrilled that she had remembered that he liked Hawaiian. Dani had asked for a smaller pie with pepperoni, jalepenos and bell peppers. She had never seen him eat like this before.

"Crews, what's with the hunger? Don't you have food in the house?" she inquired.

He explained that he had found himself at a loss about what to do with himself this afternoon and had taken to running to kill time before Dani came over. He had been out for three hours, so he had worked up a fair appetite. Crews was extreme in most ways, she reflected. Dani saw that being suspended was going to be difficult for Crews, rattling around in his mansion alone. Ted was still away in Spain and Crews hadn't heard from him.

Charlie asked what Dani had been doing. This was her in, she thought. She began to tell him about her visit to the office to give her statement. Crews quit eating, fell silent and listened to her intently. He stopped her when she got to the part about her father.

"Nevikov claimed he killed your dad? Why?", he asked warily, wondering if Nevikov had spoken to Reese about the entire history of the conspiracy against him.

"Crews, we both know my father was no angel. He was a dirty, dirty cop. You don't need to pretend with me, I am under no illusions. The Bank of America? I know you think he had a hand in that. So do I. He was mixed up in all kinds of trouble. I'm ashamed of him. The big LAPD legend? Give me a break. If Roman was telling the truth then it sounds like he got what he deserved."

"Do you mean that?", Charlie asked her, looking serious and a little shocked.

"Why? Sounds harsh?", she replied.

"A little. But then I recently shot my father, so I guess I'm in no position to comment.", he smiled.

"What about you? And Roman?", she tried tentatively. She didn't know which way he would go, truth or evasion, but she had just opened with a personal revelation of her own so she hoped he was going to follow suit.

He noticed that she would refer to him as Roman, rather than Nevikov. Was that captor-kidnapee privilege or something?

"Same. He got off lightly.", said Charlie callously. "Lucky for me his goons hated him almost as much as I did. They haven't found his body yet?"

"Not that I know of. What happens when they do?", asked Dani trying to mask how afraid she was, so as not to spook him from his disclosure.

"I told them there was some in-fighting going on, that his guys turned on him and they let me go. When he shows up dead, I ride my luck.", he stared at Reese, fearful she would abandon him.

"And what really happened?", Dani knew she was on a roll in getting him to talk openly - no zen, no jokes.

Charlie sighed. "I hit him so hard I crushed his windpipe." Dani saw that he had that hard glint in his eye again. He wasn't the least bit sorry. "His men were about to kill me in reflex but they realized the opportunity they had. I told them I wouldn't identify them if they disposed of the body and disappeared." He looked at her, eyes wide, concerned. "Reese, I think I'm a dirty cop too now. I'll understand if you want to apply for a new partner." Charlie recognized that Raybourne and co. had succeeded in corrupting him after all.

She worried for him like she had on one of their first cases together, when she had to confiscate the illegal knife he was carrying.

"I'm going nowhere, Crews. But you need to get through the investigation first. They'll be gunning for you.", she warned.

"I have a great lawyer." Charlie stated.

Dani's stomach dropped. "Connie?", she asked. Dani did not like that woman. She never had and she suddenly asked herself if the feelings she had been having towards her partner lately were perhaps as new as she claimed.

"No, Connie's not coming back. Juventino Marquez. He's really good. He tore the investigation panel apart yesterday."

Dani was irrationally glad that his new lawyer was a man.

"So you're okay with this?", he said, his anxiety slightly on the wane.

She nodded. What choice did she have?

"I want to keep you out if it. But I needed to tell you. I owe you that."

"I'm okay with it. Just stay out of trouble from now on. And never, _ever_, do anything crazy like that again, or so-help-me-god I will shoot you myself." She noticed that he looked relieved but he didn't say he agreed to the last part.

"How is Tidwell?", Charlie asked her, trying to change the subject now he had got what he wanted. He hardly ever referred to her relationship with their Captain. It was understood that he knew about them, and Tidwell had spoken to Charlie on a couple of occasions about Dani, but she never really spoke to him about Tidwell.

"He's fine. Driving me crazy actually. Things are a little...difficult, at the moment", she didn't expand on this summary but he saw her deep frown. Then Dani smiled, her turn to change the subject. "Hey - guess who else I saw today?", she asked him.

He looked at her blankly and resumed eating his pizza.

"Your friend Patty."

"Ah, Doc Klein?! How is she?", he exclaimed. Crews was also one of the counselor's more colorful clients. He had driven her to distraction on many occasions. Dr Klein found Charlie fascinating but didn't care if she never saw the man darken her door again.

"I imagine you'll find out for yourself if they ever let you back to work.", remarked Dani. "She gave me a hard time - the works. Asked me if I felt worthy of what you did yesterday..."

"Which you are, Reese.", he said sincerely.

They looked at one another other quietly until Dani started to feel uncomfortable at certain sensations she detected in her stomach.

"I need to thank you. Would you like the rest of my pizza?", she said glancing down at Crews' empty box, his last slice already a distant memory.

He grinned at her and reached for her pizza.

/

The rest of the evening they spent chatting regularly, as if they were in the car. He slipped into zen mode only occasionally. Dani was grateful that things did seem normal between them despite the heavy conversation they had begun with. The tv and the sofa were welcome new fixtures in his home she thought, the former only purchased to keep Rachel entertained when she was staying. Dani switched the tv on and was unsurprised to see that the last channel he had been watching was the Discovery channel, source of many of the tidbits of irrelevant information he would feed her throughout a shift, she imagined. She found a sensational show about cops, extreme traffic violations and high speed chases and the like. The footage was old but they whooped whenever the LAPD featured.

"Hey Reese. I need a new car. Wanna help me pick one?", he waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"You bet.", she sang enthusiastically. "But what happened to the last one?"

He explained that it had wound up wedged under a garage door, the front caved against a wall. Totalled. The way he said it made it sound like the car had done it to itself. He flipped open his laptop and she scooted up next to him, instructing him to search for her fantasy cars, each one getting progressively more outlandish and expensive. Charlie still typed with single digits on each hand, which a annoyed Reese so she seized the laptop in order to make faster progress. They argued a little about Charlie's preferred models and colorways but soon came up with a shortlist that they both agreed on. They had fun together, each sneaking long looks at the other's face when their partner was distracted by the screen. They agreed that one day this week, Dani would accompany him to a dealership, all of whom knew Charlie and the rate at which he burned through automobiles, and welcomed him with open arms.

/

When the excitement over cars was through, they settled down and started watching a movie. Charlie didn't care much for tv and found it hard to stay quiet and concentrate. He repeatedly asked Dani questions about the motives of the characters, ever the detective, and she shushed and nudged him in response. He wasn't paying attention but found himself appreciating the moment anyway, Reese on his sofa with him, watching her profile, his stomach finally full adding to the feeling of general contentment. Suspension wasn't so bad after all.

When he next looked over at his partner, he saw that she had fallen asleep, her head lolling against his shoulder. He took the opportunity to look at her unguarded and uninterrupted. Every second of what he had done to find and finish Nevikov had been worth it, he had no doubts. Charlie recorded every detail of her face mindfully, finally transfixed by the bow of her lips. She often had a mean mouth, but her lips were always beautiful, he thought.

After a while, it became obvious that she was deeply asleep and he wondered if he should try to carry her upstairs to his room where she could sleep more comfortably. He decided that it might freak her out if she woke up there, and anyway, it was a pretty clumsy hint that in his bed was really where he wanted her, even if he took the sofa himself. He decided to make her more comfortable where she was and to just leave her downstairs. She looked peaceful enough. He moved her very gently until she was laying flat. Charlie fetched a blanket, marvelling at the sheer amount of new _things_ he seemed to have accumulated since Rachel had come to stay - it would never have occurred to him to buy a blanket - and he draped it gently over Reese as she slept.

He kissed her goodnight mentally, resisting the urge to do it physically, locked the front door for one of the first times ever, and sloped upstairs to bed himself.


	8. Chapter 8

Charlie snapped awake to the sound of whimpering and yelling coming from downstairs. He remembered that he had locked the door. He sprang out of bed and launched himself down the stairs towards Dani, who lay jerking in her sleep on the sofa, blanket thrown onto the floor.

He fell to his knees and gently took hold of one of her arms and the opposite shoulder, stilling her and saying her name over and over to bring her round.

She opened her eyes, looking bewildered.

"You were dreaming. It's okay, it was just a dream.", he soothed, although he was possibly more jittered than she was.

Dani sat up, caught her breath and her bearings. She felt ashamed and wondered if she had been talking in her sleep. Charlie sat down beside her, patiently waiting for her to recover. Her heart rate slowed and he seemed to know when it had returned to normal.

"C'mon, I'll get you a drink.", he rose and she followed him to his kitchen.

As he turned to the opposite counter to grab some cups Dani's eyes lingered over his bare back. Ordinarily Charlie would have thought to have thrown on a shirt, always self conscious of bearing his scars and the smudged indigo of his tattoos, especially for the first time in front of someone. He had sprinted down the stairs in such a blind panic that he still hadn't realized he was standing before her half naked. He needn't have worried though because Dani was more distracted by his shape than his imperfections. She was admiring the way the breadth of his shoulders tapered to his narrow waist. She never really got to appreciate that much when she saw him daily in only his suits. Well cut, immaculate suits though they all were. As he stretched and leaned forward to rummage in a cabinet she stared at the two dimples at the base of his spine and tried to suppress the desire to scoot up behind him and touch him there. His sweatpants were slung very low on his slender hips. Indecently low, really. Enough to drive a girl to distraction. And distracted she was, thank god, from her nightmare.

She shook her head violently like she had just sustained a hammer blow to her head. She had to snap out of it. What the hell was with her? She'd just been through a kidnapping, one she was reliving and embellishing with fresh horrors every time she closed her eyes, but all of a sudden she couldn't retrieve her mind from the gutter. Shouldn't she be feeling traumatized rather than horny? Dani tried to convince herself that this was just some life-affirming hormone coursing through her bloodstream, her body's defiant reaction to a near death experience at Roman's hands. Then she reminded herself that she had spent the previous night at Tidwell's apartment and that she hadn't experienced any such urges towards him; he had tried to pull her close in bed but she had batted him off, claiming to need some space. It wasn't just comfort and the confirmation that she was alive through sex that she wanted. It was specifically about the tall redhead pottering around in his dark kitchen, muttering something about the soothing properties of camomile tea. Dani bit her lip, recognizing that she was in trouble here.

They were partners, for christ's sake. She didn't know what to do. Well, she decided, she could stop looking at him like she wanted to swallow him whole, for a start.

Crews was still as Crews-like as ever, he hadn't changed, but suddenly that was appealing to her in a way it never had before. She had accepted that she missed him like crazy while she was posted at the FBI, his inane babble in the car, the constant stream of weird fruit from those bottomless pockets, his crooked smile, his great capacity for kindness and the way he always, always, had her back. She called him almost daily while she was away, much keener to touch base with him than with her boyfriend. Or whatever the hell Tidwell was to her - she didn't know right now. This she had acknowledged even before the episode with Roman.

She had admitted it, she had a lot of affection for Crews, not that she'd ever shown it. Now more than ever, she was unsure where she stood, with Crews, with Tidwell. She didn't understand whether this thing for Crews was real and developing as fast as she felt it was, or whether it was just mixed up with sheer gratitude at what he had done and relief at being back where she belonged, rolling her eyes at his fruit facts. She tried to rationalize it. She had spent most of the previous night trying to figure it out, laying there in Tidwell's bed with her mind fixed on her partner. Wholly inappropriate thoughts had occurred to her then before sleep, and then Roman's grimace, finally claimed her once again. _Come on Dani, you don't spend hours thinking about jumping a guy's bones just because you feel grateful to him_, she reasoned. She wasn't the type of girl to go weak at the knees and fall at a guy's feet because of some heroic act. Heroism was kind of part of their job description after all.

Dani had employed a lot of reasons to explain, or to excuse, sex in the past. There was sex as an avoidance tactic, sex based on self hatred, using sex for escapism, to expel nervous energy, to hide from grief or anger, and of course her speciality, because of alcohol, to name but a few. She was an expert in recognizing why she had done the things she had, she didn't need a Dr Klein to help her figure it out. But she had rarely cared enough to worry about why she had done these things, slept with the wrong guys. It had hardly ever been about love...or even lust for her. Not for a long while. She hadn't let anyone get that close. Now she was left contemplating those last two reasons for her feelings in relation to Crews because she had ruled out all the others. And it confused her so much that her head hurt.

_"Reese_." Charlie repeated, having turned towards her. "Are you here? I said that we have no camomile, but we do have mint, lemon or, um, 'herbal fusion'?". He was brandishing boxes of tea, looking earnest and completely ignorant of the mental to and fro going on inside Dani's head.

"Coffee", she answered. She sat on his counter and her eyes fell to his torso. She noticed the wispy line of strawberry blond hair that ran from his belly button down into the front of his sweatpants. She thought about tracing its line with her fingers. She wondered how he would react if she did. Her mouth was dry. Actually, she could do with something a lot stronger than coffee right now but she knew she wouldn't get it here. She thought about leaving to find a liquor store or a bar and a guy to take these feelings out on (sex as an avoidance tactic).

"Coffee? It's not even 4am. You'll never get back to sleep if you drink coffee at this time of night...", Charlie reasoned with her.

"Maybe I don't want to go back to sleep", said Dani, a haunted look a suddenly etched on her face.

Charlie dropped the tea and padded over to her, concerned. He stood pressed up against the counter, between her parted legs. To have him so close in such a position all of a sudden made Dani nervous. His shoulders shone in the moonlight that leaked in through the window, his freckles invisible bathed in light.

"Are you gonna tell me what you were dreaming?", he asked her softly. He still didn't know too many details about what she had been through with Nevikov and he was almost afraid to hear it. He rested his hands on the counter either side of her thighs. He was as close as he could be without breaking the cardinal rule of not touching Dani Reese.

Dani shook her head quickly, eyes wide, staring back at him, not wanting to give voice to the images that had visited her sleep.

"You know, I still have prison nightmares, even now. I still panic. They still feel as real as they ever did while I'm asleep. The only difference is that these days it takes me less and less time to realize that it's not real once I've woken up. It gets easier. You will feel better. And all the time you don't, I'm here. You can call me in the night if you want, I'll talk you down with a Koan or two. I'll teach you the path to zen". Charlie offered, smiling at the last part and expecting her to swat him or something.

Dani didn't hit him, or roll her eyes, or even give him a stony look. She raised her right hand to his jaw where Roman had hit him, and brushed against his skin softly. It was still an ugly red mark but was already purpling in places. He didn't wince, he knew she wouldn't press too hard. Charlie remarked to himself that she had touched him more in the past 48 hours than in the entire time he had known her previously. He was encouraged by this but he knew it wasn't that simple.

Their eyes locked again, just as they had at the hospital only the day before when he could feel Tidwell's stare boring a hole right through him. Her fingers wandered to his shoulder. He shivered slightly. Charlie wondered if he was dreaming all this because he thought she looked like she was going to kiss him. It was all he wanted in the world of course, but he wasn't about to let it happen. Not now, when she was such a mess. He would feel like he was taking advantage. And although she hadn't said all that much, he knew she was a mess; the way she had sought out his company, the uncharacteristic physical contact he was getting, the small gestures of help she now accepted from him. This wasn't the Dani of old. If it happened at all he wanted Dani to have a clear head about it, to have resolved things with Tidwell and to know she wanted it for real. Charlie knew he couldn't handle screwing up things with his partner as a result of the fallout from the kidnap. Raybourne, Roman and whoever else was messing with his life had already ruined enough for him, Dani was off limits - Roman had already discovered this to his mortal cost. Charlie stopped her kissing him the only way he could think of without making her feel like he had rejected her; he threw his arms around her and went in for a big hug, their third since he had delivered her from Roman.

They held each other tight and Dani smiled nervously at the reckless way she had been about to lay her cards on the table and kiss him right there. That it hadn't happened was probably for the best, at least it bought her more time to think. She laid her lips against his bare shoulder instead. It wasn't a kiss but there was contact and it pleased her. Charlie felt her mouth on him and screwed his eyes tight shut. She wasn't making this easy for him. As Dani's lips parted slightly, he bristled when her sigh whistled along his skin where his shoulder and neck met and he could feel himself getting hopelessly turned on. He turned his face against her hair and drew in a deep breath, pushing his hips hard against the counter, glad there was no contact between them below the waist to give him away. They stayed like this for a while, probably longer than a conventional hug between friends should strictly be, each taking what they could from their embrace without revealing too much to the other. When Dani yawned contentedly against him, Charlie suggested that she forget the coffee and tried to get some more sleep, but upstairs in his room instead of on the sofa.

His room. His bed. With him. Dani raised an eyebrow.

"Don't worry, I won't touch you", he laughed, more to gently let her know that this wasn't on the agenda than to needlessly reassure her that his intentions were good. _She_ was the one who seemed intent on pushing things, after all. Truth was, he knew that if _she_ touched _him_ he wouldn't have the strength to resist, so he wanted to warn her off. Dani consented.

All Charlie had to do now was get them upstairs without her noticing the bulge in his pants. He was thankful he hadn't switched on the kitchen lights and he was confident he could walk it off between the kitchen and his bedroom.

/

Dani glanced around his spartan bedroom. It was nearly bigger than her whole apartment. It was weird being there. It was the first time in her life that a guy had suggested they go to bed together just to sleep. He tossed her a t-shirt to sleep in from his closet and she was a little dismayed when she saw him grab one for himself too, suddenly coy now that it was bedtime. She smirked at how chivalrous he was being. While he was pulling the shirt over his eyes, Dani shot a last look at the fluffy line of hair on his navel that was driving her crazy. He would never have to know.

"Turn around, Crews", she said. Charlie got into the bed and turned his back as she asked. Dani took off her clothes and threw on his t-shirt, which drowned her, unhooked her bra from underneath, pulled it off through one arm of the shirt and tossed it onto the floor. "Okay." she signalled that it was safe for him to turn over as she hopped into the opposite side of the bed. Charlie rolled over, catching a flash of her brown thighs as she slipped under the sheets. It was going to be a long night, he thought, even though the sun was nearly up already.

"Night Reese", he said.

"Night Crews", she replied with a snigger at the strangeness of them being bedfellows.

Charlie switched off the light and lay motionless. The bed was huge so he didn't need to worry about winding up on top of her accidentally, there was plenty of room. Even though there was little prospect of them touching, he couldn't manage to get over the fact that Dani was there, barely clothed, in his bed. He felt like a teenage boy. Five minutes earlier she had been in his arms, ready for the kiss he had craved. And he had not taken his one chance. He could still salvage things if he chose to, he considered, he could reach out to her warmth under the covers right now. He felt sure that she wouldn't push him away tonight. No. He wasn't going to be that guy who lured a vulnerable woman into his bed with promises of t-shirts and no touching, only to put the moves on her anyway. When, and if, Dani ever came to him under the right circumstances he would know and he'd be there with her in a heartbeat. Until then, he was her partner and maybe her best friend in the world. He wouldn't risk that. Charlie was a good guy, he told himself, despite the fact he was also a murderer. If he was such a good guy, then why did he still have a raging hard-on? He thought maybe he should sleep on his front.

"Crews?", she said into the dark.

"Yeah?", he replied, worried that she could somehow read his mind.

"Thanks." Dani said simply.

She didn't qualify it, there was nothing to explain what she was thanking him for. It could have been for letting her stay the night, it could have been for what happened at the orange grove. It could have been for fighting his instincts and keeping his hands to himself. Maybe it was all three of those.

"Anytime." Charlie said back, thinking that this would be appropriate in all eventualities.

Dani smiled into the shadows, content to be right where she was for the first time in weeks.

Charlie lay awake, uncomfortable and kicking himself for trying to do the right thing.


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning Charlie awoke and grinned at the daylight flooding through his bedroom windows, the same way he did every day since his release from Pelican Bay. Today his grin was wider than normal. He could feel that Dani had shuffled up behind him in the night and was almost spooning him, as far as that was possible when one sleeping partner was so much shorter than the other. He turned over gently so as not to wake her. She was so beautiful he felt like crying. _So this is what it feels like waking up next to Dani Reese_. He wished it could be like this every day. He watched her for five, maybe ten, minutes, her brow frown-free for once, her long eyelashes casting soft shadows on her cheeks. He sighed. Charlie knew that he was hopelessly in love.

He felt better now it was morning, a new day. Things had gotten a little tense the previous night. He had felt this way about her for a long while but had been able to bury it. Since the kidnapping though it had been threatening to overwhelm him and last night after her nightmare in particular he had found it difficult just being around her. He guessed it was down to the distinct possibility that Dani now reciprocated, or at the very least was just realizing how much he cared and was examining her own feelings. She was looking at him differently and he could feel it. All the while Charlie had himself convinced that it was one way traffic he found it easier to shut off. But she had wanted to kiss him last night, he knew she did. Maybe through confusion or exhaustion, but possibly also through affection. It had scared him. He could not screw this up and the pressure he was putting himself under to do things right was driving him crazy. Last night he had just wanted to _do things_, period. But with the new day's light he felt he could cope again, go back to loving her at arm's length and taking care of her without crossing any lines or having any more tricky conversations. She would be less emotional now she had gotten some sleep and they could go on as normal. He wasn't certain why, but he was terrified of addressing it, of saying something out of turn, of rushing her. He guessed it was because he felt all this so deeply that he knew it would overwhelm her if he ever tried to express it. He felt like she knew a little already but there was still the chance he had this all wrong and she would be horrified, flee and he'd lose her altogether. That was his deepest fear. There was still a lot of uncertainty in his mind and he knew that he needed to just let things settle into place. Charlie Crews could do infinite patience if he had to but when Dani looked at him the way she had last night all his zen had abandoned him and he felt sorely tempted to cast his caution aside.

One thing he was certain of was that if Dani woke up now and found herself on his side of the bed with him right next to her, the tension and weirdness between them would return. He hopped out of bed silently, pausing in the doorway to catch one last look at her serene and asleep.

/

Half an hour later he returned, fresh coffee in one hand and a plate of fruit in the other. He chuckled as he saw her nose twitch as it recognized the scent of coffee before she was even fully awake. He set the cup and plate down on the bedside table closest to her, technically his side of the bed. Then, he slid onto the free side of the mattress and gently shook her awake. Dani groaned and rolled onto her front, burying her eyes in the pillow.

"Reese, wake up it's a beautiful day", he sang enthusiastically.

"Leave me alone", came Dani's reply.

"C'mon, I brought you coffee", he continued.

"Coffee...", she murmured, opening one eye, suddenly interested.

"Yeah, and guava, and pineapple, oranges, strawberries...take a look."

Dani groaned again but rolled back over, pushing herself up against the headboard with a begrudging look on her face. She knew better than to try to ignore him and expect him to go away. She felt for the coffee by her side and began to take small sips, brain still not in gear. Charlie reached over her and grabbed the plate, taking a slice of orange for himself and offering her the rest. She waved it away without making a sound. They sat in companionable silence, her drinking, him eating the fruit and biding his time before starting a conversation. He knew to wait at least until he could see the whites of her eyes and preferably until she had started forming coherent sentences of her own. Finally, she reached out and took a strawberry from the plate. Charlie grinned.

"So. What do you want to do today? It's a great day to be suspended or on sick leave", he was hoping that she wasn't going to want to go home just yet.

"I dunno. Sleep more?", she pleaded. "And I'm not sick, I'm just signed off." She added as an afterthought.

"No, you're not sick." Charlie agreed with her to keep the peace. "Which makes sick leave even more fun".

_So this is what waking up with Charlie Crews was all about_. She found his puppyish enthusiasm hard to deal with first thing in the morning but normally she had already sank at least two shots of coffee before she arrived at work and had to counter all the smiling and leaping around. He made her feel seasick.

"I might take a run. Wanna join me?" he suggested brightly.

"In what? My boots and jeans? And I don't think your sweats will fit me." Dani replied.

"Oh. Yeah." He pondered.

"But you go, don't let me stop you.", she said quickly, suddenly worried that she might be cramping his style.

"Okay. Well, I won't be long. Hey, you could take a swim while I'm out?", he offered, trying to make it clear that he absolutely didn't want her to leave. He just had to do something with his excess energy or he would be bouncing off the walls all day, especially when there was no work to go to, nothing to apply himself to.

"Well I'm guessing your spare bikini won't fit me either.", she smirked.

"Ah. Right. I don't think it's your color anyway. You know, you should keep some stuff here in case you ever want to come over and hang out..." he stopped, suddenly feeling a little awkward at his all too-keen invitation. Wasn't the sort of thing you said to someone you had been dating for a while and you kind of wanted them to move in? She didn't reply but just eyed him carefully. Normally she would have shot him down for it, he thought.

Charlie got up and went to his closet to find shorts and running shoes. As he rummaged for a suitable t-shirt he didn't mind wrecking, he could hear Dani stirring behind him. When he turned around, his jaw swung open involuntarily. Dani was standing triumphantly by the bed, having hitched up the black t-shirt she had borrowed from him to sleep in, tying the loose material tight in a knot under her chest and rolling the sleeves up at her shoulders.

"Hey, what do you think? It's a bikini of sorts. Will it do?", she laughed.

Charlie couldn't speak for a second or two. He managed a caveman "Uh...", but that was all that really sprang to mind. He took in her midriff, her shapely legs, the beautiful colour of her skin. He had never seen as much of her before. She looked incredible. He wanted to race over there and run his hands all over her. So much for this being a new day and all. It worried him that she could stand in front of him in her black lace panties and half a t-shirt so totally unselfconsciously. Like he was her gay best friend or something. She had to know what she was doing to him. Maybe it hadn't occurred to her that he was a red blooded heterosexual male, perhaps she just didn't see him that way. Perhaps the trust thing had gone too far. "Very, um...pretty?", Charlie ventured, immediately cursing himself internally at his choice of adjective.

"Well 'pretty' wasn't really the look I was going for, but thanks anyway, I guess.", she smiled, amused at how flustered he was. She would eat him alive if she really chose to seduce him, she concluded.

Charlie figured she was teasing him, she knew exactly what she was doing. "You better hope you don't get busted for public indecency, or you'll join me on suspension.", he said.

"How is this any worse than a bikini?", she challenged incredulously.

"Is that a thong?", Charlie retorted, "Turn around, let me see Reese."

"Okay, cut it out, Crews. No, it's not a thong, I'm not a total exhibitionist.", Dani said, growing serious now he had called her bluff and was getting bolder.

"I wonder if the neighbors will agree." Charlie laughed. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Give me a break Crews, you don't have neighbors. The nearest house is an entire neighborhood away by my standards. They'd need binoculars.", she scoffed.

"Well they'll get a treat today when they're out in the yard looking for coyotes.", Charlie felt better making light of the situation, it helped him maintain his composure.

She reached down to the bed and viciously span a pillow in his direction.

"Okay, okay!...I'll get you a pool towel.", he shuffled off to the bathroom, glad to leave the room, taking the opportunity to change into his running clothes, taking deep breaths and trying to erase every wicked thought that had arisen. He knew he couldn't un-see what he had just witnessed. What was more, he didn't want to. When he returned and handed the large blue towel to her, she wrapped it around herself protectively. Suddenly he felt sorry, both that the show was over and that he might have made her feel bad. "Seriously Reese, not many women could pull that off and look as great as you do.", he said shyly as he was half way out the door.

Dani smiled to herself and hugged the towel tight around her before following him downstairs. Flirting with Crews felt good.

In the kitchen, Charlie stowed away the boxes of fruit tea from the night before and set about filling his water bottle for his run. Dani appeared behind him.

"I'll be an hour at the outside, it's already real hot out there. Make yourself at home.", he said as he prepared to leave, killing the urge to lean forward and peck her on the cheek like they were a couple right at the last second. It was amazing how quickly he had gotten used to having her around.

He watched her pad out towards the pool and drop her towel on a sun lounger, exposing herself to the sun and throwing her head back to revel in it. It was the single most seductive gesture he had ever seen. And she had no idea. He wanted to join her outside but he knew that a run would do him far more good.

/

Outside his front door, he locked it behind him for the second or third time since Rachel left. Not to keep Dani in, but to keep anyone who would do her harm out. Maybe he would go the whole hog and get an intruder alarm installed. He stretched briefly and began running, quickly picking up the pace and pushing himself way harder than he normally would in the heat. One foot after the other, heart pumping and lungs on fire, Charlie passed the point of pain and settled into a punishing rhythm, meditating on his motion. He focused on the effort, trying to push away thoughts of Dani with her arms around him, Dani warming his bed and Dani half naked in his pool. He ran harder than he thought he could, determined to chase out the tension in his limbs borne of wanting her so badly. He would be too tired for impure thoughts when he got back. He hoped to god that when he did get back to the house, Dani would be done swimming, showered and dressed already.

Charlie pulled up after running at full speef for forty five minutes and bent double. This whole situation would kill him at this rate. He sat on a boulder and swallowed down his water, shaking his head at his stupidity in falling in love with his partner, lusting after a woman as spiky and complicated as Dani Reese, a woman who was in a relationship with their Captain to boot. The daughter of a guy he knew was involved in the Bank of America job and who was somehow implicated in Charlie's own unjust incarceration. A guy he had been determined to take down eventually, along with the rest, that was if he didn't turn up dead first.

The boulder was warm against his skin. The sun was mercilessly beating down on the canyons. He would need to get into the shade soon if he didn't want to get burnt. Still, he was happy sitting on his rock, mulling it all over like Rodin's bronze, _The Thinker _in sneakers_. _ He often came here to puzzle on things. He visited at all times of the day, marvelling at the changing colors of the rock as the sun changed position and intensity, watching the shadows advance as time drew on.

Dani must know how he felt, it had to be obvious by now, and Charlie definitely felt that they were getting closer. Their conversations had become more intimate since the kidnapping. He also knew that Dani trusted him, probably more than ever after the thing with Nevikov. Perhaps she was just finally relaxing, letting her guard down, purely because she now considered him a real friend. Real friends, like Crews and Ted were friends. If that was the case, and that's all it was, Charlie knew he was going to get hurt. Having her around the house was only going to make things worse when she got over whatever tiff she and Tidwell were having and went home to him. But he would never ask her to leave, all the same.


	10. Chapter 10

Dani swam slow, lazy lengths on her back and laughed at the luxury of the pool and the charmed lifestyle Charlie was leading. She knew that he had paid for it in unimaginable ways and she marvelled that such sudden wealth hadn't made him crazy, or arrogant, or both. The zen thing was still a little bizarre but she had seen that mask slip enough times by now to know that he just clung to it in order to cope with the trauma that had been thrust upon him. She wondered what he would have been like had the twelve years inside Pelican Bay not happened. Would he still be Crews?

Her makeshift bikini wasn't all that practical. As she swam on her back, air collected under the fabric over her chest, giving her what looked like one giant, pneumatic breast, which got in the way and put her off her stroke. If she could be assured that Crews wouldn't arrive home any second she would pul off the t-shirt and go nude. She thought about how great a naked swim would feel, but Crews had nearly suffered a heart attack as it was so she wasn't going to risk it. She smirked again at the discomfort he had shown when she had all but flashed him.

She realized that she hadn't thought about Roman since last night and the nightmare. Right then, at the merest of thoughts in his direction, he was back with her. Dani stopped swimming and dunked herself under the water. She came to the surface and pushed the hair off her face. No, no good. His poisonous snarl was still fixed in her mind's eye. She took to swimming once more, kicking hard in the water to keep moving, to remind herself she was not bound to a chair in a basement any more. She wanted Crews to come home. She had felt his absence so keenly since he left. He calmed her. She had slept soundly next to him in his bed last night. But that could not continue, she knew. It was a little irregular, even for her.

Dani contemplated returning to her small, quiet apartment with only Roman's burning eyes and the call of the liquor store on the corner for company tonight. She guessed she could always stay at Tidwell's again, he'd be happy to have her back. That thought was no comfort, or at least the experience hadn't when she had tried it out during the first night back after the hospital. It wasn't because he hadn't taken care of her, or tried to, anyway. He had tried valiantly, but she just couldn't take it from him, she felt smothered. Dani couldn't escape the feeling that Tidwell wanted something from her that she just couldn't give. Not right now, and if she was true to herself, probably not ever. What was worse was that she was beginning to hate him for it, too, and it wasn't his fault. Going back to him tonight because she was scared and lonely was the wrong thing. It would give him hope that they were back on track and that was just postponing the inevitable break-up conversation. And she didn't feel strong enough to face the inevitable right now, so she had decided that the best thing to do was just keep her distance. She knew it was cowardly, but she thought he might get the message, maybe even make it easy for her. She wished he would just give up.

Since sleeping in her partner's bed for a second night was hardly healthy either, and going home to her mom was a no-no, Dani prepared herself for the prospect of going home. She would not visit the liquor store. She would not find a seedy bar in which she could be anonymous and ignore everything that was happening with the help of the company of some deadbeat guy. The only guy she wanted to be around right now was Crews and only distance was going to help her figure that one out, too. She had feelings for him and she knew she had to deal with them responsibly for once. This time, she couldn't just screw the guy and then never call him again if it didn't turn out to be all she had imagined. And she _was_ finding herself imagining it with alarming frequency. Maybe she did need to see a counselor, or someone in private practice, since Tidwell might see fit to access her files at work in his capacity as her boss.

Dani swam up and down the pool, mulling all this over. Her mind had flitted back to wondering what sex with her partner would be like and why he hadn't tried anything with her so far. There had been plenty of opportunity since she turned up for pizza yesterday evening, probably hoping on some subliminal (or not so subliminal) level that something would happen between them, building on the realization she'd had in that orange grove and then again in the hospital that Crews was what she really wanted, what she had really needed, all along. But he had behaved entirely decently. _Weirdo_. Deep down Dani knew that it wasn't just about sex, and thought that perhaps Crews knew this too. It wasn't something she could start and then stop if things got too heavy. They worked together and she didn't want to have to start working with anyone else. Sex with your partner was taboo. It couldn't happen. Still, it didn't mean she had to stop thinking about it.

Just as Dani had given herself the green light to go right on ahead with that train of thought, Crews appeared before her, standing at the edge of the pool by her towel, drenched in sweat and still panting from his run. He looked red and uncomfortable and as if he might have been stood there for a while. She gave a start, stopped swimming and swallowed a lung full of pool water in surprise and secret shame.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you.", he said.

Dani caught her breath. "I didn't see you come out. How was the run?"

"Tough. It's too hot for it." he said. Charlie did not thrive in the heat.

"So get in, cool down.", she suggested.

Charlie looked at the blue water and then at her. Unable to resist either, he started to kick off his running shoes, much to Dani's delight. She watched him peel off his wet t-shirt and dive in over her head.

The water, although not cold, was a shock to Charlie's skin since he'd worked up such a sweat on his run. He came to the surface and kicked vigorously in an attempt to acclimatize. Charlie stood comfortably in the deep end but Dani struggled to keep her chin above the surface, so they edged back towards the shallows a little to talk. Charlie quickly realized that as the water level receded, more of Dani became visible and her t-shirt clung to the swell and curve of her breasts. He couldn't take it. He stopped wading forward just as he caught a glimpse of her nipples. So much for a strenuous run to curb his desire. Dani launched on to her back and floated there, so he followed suit quickly, mostly to avert his eyes.

"Crews, this pool is amazing.", she said.

"Yeah, it's great. But I am not attached to this pool. I am not attached to material possessions.", he chanted automatically.

"It's basically a hole, with water in it. And water's an element, right? I'll bet it's zen to be attached to the elements...", Dani reasoned.

Charlie grinned at her.

"Whatever. I love it, though.", Dani replied.

They were both quiet for a few moments, enjoying the sensation of floating and watching tiny specks of birds in the clear sky. Charlie let the water cool his throbbing temples.

"Oh, Reese. Tidwell called.", he suddenly remembered to tell her.

Dani had water in her ears and didn't think she'd heard him right. She sprang up and her feet hit the pool floor. "Tidwell called you? When?", she spluttered, having floated deeper down the pool than she thought.

"No, he called _you_. Your cell was ringing as I came through the kitchen...the display says he's called you six times.", Charlie stated.

"Did you speak to him?", Dani asked, a little worried. She had ignored two calls from Tidwell last night when they had been goofing around looking at cars and she had not even checked her cell this morning. It wasn't like he hadn't been on her mind but she hadn't even thought to call him and she suddenly felt bad. She knew Tidwell would be pissed to learn who she was with.

"No, I wasn't going to answer your phone.", Charlie replied, sensing her unease and getting to his feet also. "I brought it out though, it's on top of your towel."

Dani went quiet and frowned.

"Reese. Tidwell does know where you were last night, right?", Charlie asked her, his face serious, stepping closer to her.

"No. I guess he doesn't.", she admitted.

Charlie rolled his eyes. "So, as far as he knows, you could not be coping with the whole abduction thing at all and could have wound up drunk in a dumpster, or worse, last night?"

"Give me a break, Crews, you're sounding just like him.", Dani snapped.

"He probably has every patrol at the precinct out looking for you as we speak, scared that Roman's people are taking reprisals...", Charlie almost lost his temper. Almost. He knew what it was like to be worried sick about her.

She had always been quick to anger. "Oh yeah? Then why hasn't he called you? You'd be the first person he called. I'll tell you why, because he knows full well where I am and he hates it!", she raised her voice, slapping her hand down on the water and creating a splash that hit Charlie in the face. He didn't flinch but stood firm in front of her.

"He hates me? What did I do?", Charlie asked, incredulous.

Dani sighed, "No, he doesn't hate you, Crews, he hates _me and you_. He gets jealous."

Oh. Charlie didn't want to have this conversation about _them_ now, on the back of an argument about her and Tidwell.

Charlie tried placatory. "Look, Dani, all I'm saying is that with what you've been though lately, what we've all been through, I can see how Tidwell must be feeling. He's worried about you. He loves you, right? And as far as he knows, you're missing. That's a terrible feeling. And no matter what you feel for him, he's basically a good guy and he doesn't deserve it."

"What do you mean '_No matter what I feel for him_'?'", she raised an eyebrow. He had called her Dani, which meant he was deadly serious, maybe even pissed with her. This was all new. He was sexy when he was mad, she thought. Then she remembered that she was angry too, and snapped out of it.

He'd crossed a line. Charlie figured that he may as well continue and be damned. "You don't love _him_ anymore. _Do you_?"

Dani had been getting mad at Charlie, for criticizing her behavior, for sticking up for Tidwell, for presuming enough to comment on their relationship. She had been about to fly off the handle at him until she noticed how suddenly vulnerable he seemed, how his shoulders had dropped slightly and how needy his voice was at that last part of his question. She had never seen him behave this way. He wasn't challenging her about Tidwell, he was asking her to tell him it was over, and although he wouldn't say it directly, she knew deep down why he needed to hear that.

She couldn't bear hurting him, especially when he was asking her to admit what was true anyway. She had only just admitted it to herself really, leave alone decided what to do about it. He was standing close, looking at her intently, almost standing over her. She looked up at him, the drips from his hair hitting her chin.

"No, I don't love him. I'm not sure I ever have, not properly. Not like...", she said quietly, looking Crews in the eye. She had stopped herself from saying something stupid at the last.

Charlie registered every word she had said and every word that she hadn't. He stored it all for a later date, or maybe not, he still didn't know if he figured in all of this. But he felt like maybe she was implying he did and his heart lurched.

"But no matter what, you need to let him know you're okay, that you're here and you're safe", he said softly.

"Are you telling me what to do, Crews?" she asked, raising that eyebrow again.

"I think I am.", Charlie looked surprised at himself.

"Huh", said Dani.

Charlie didn't know how much trouble he was now in because she immediately turned on her heels and made her way out of the pool, not looking back. He watched her go, pulling herself up the pool steps and wandering over to the sun lounger. Charlie groaned internally as he watched her reach behind her head to wring out her hair. He took to swimming, for want of something to do other than gawp at Dani's perfect body. He looked up after three lengths, to see that Dani had gone inside.

He felt compelled to keep swimming, the same way he had nearly killed himself running earlier. He desperately wanted her to break things off with Tidwell, for selfish reasons, and for her own welfare. He was surprised that he had shown the audacity to tell her so. From what he had seen, he had concluded that she couldn't be in love with Tidwell, but the insecure part of himself had been scared that maybe she just hid it well, not being one to give much away. She had confirmed it now though, although he recognized that her not loving Tidwell did not necessarily mean that Charlie did have a place in her heart.

The idea of her and the Captain had been fine for a while, he had been all for it in the beginning. It was a chance of a normal, safe relationship - something that Charlie was in no position to give her. He had even tipped Tidwell off that he should buy Dani a goldfish at thanksgiving, once he had caught wind of the fact that they were going on a date. He had seen how captivated she was by the fish in the mall that time and he thought it was sweet. Her thing with Tidwell gave her some self belief and something decent to hold on to. Charlie was much happier knowing she was with Tidwell than having to worry that she was out with strangers, getting into trouble and maybe sliding back into old habits. He could never see it really going anywhere with Tidwell and he was surprised it had lasted as long as it had. They were at great pains to pretend to the world that they were just colleagues anyhow, so when Charlie started to realize that he liked Reese more than he should himself, it was almost possible for him to ignore that she even had a boyfriend.

Right now though it was very difficult to ignore. Ever since Tidwell and co. had arrived at the orange grove and all but broke Charlie and Dani apart, Charlie had felt something menacing growling inside him, directed right at his Captain. Jealousy wasn't very zen, he reminded himself. Charlie didn't want to possess Dani, he would never stifle the things or the people he loved, but he could see that Tidwell was at risk of doing just that to Dani in his desperation to keep her. Charlie knew that Dani would only tolerate it for so long. He hoped that her ending things would be best for everyone. He also knew, however, that after their sort-of fight just now Dani was stubborn enough to ignore Charlie just to spite him, if she was pissed enough at him for interfering. He would have to go inside to face the music soon. In the meantime, he just kept swimming.


	11. Chapter 11

Charlie felt a dull ache in his limbs a from all the running and swimming and a prickle on his shoulders from the sun. It was time to go in. He lingered for a while looking out over the city below, allowing himself to dry off a little before he went into the house since he had no towel. Dani might well have left in a fit of pique already, he supposed.

Inside, to his relief, he found her sat on the sofa, dressed and towelling off her hair.

"I took a shower, hope that's okay?", she asked.

"Of course", he shrugged, "Mi casa es tu casa." He tried to detect some anger or resentment in her eyes but found none. Maybe he wasn't in the doghouse after all. "I'm going to get a shower too, I won't be long."

As he skipped up the stairs two at a time with his sweaty t-shirt draped over his shoulder she called out, "Crews?".

He stopped and looked down at her.

"You were right. I need to call Tidwell. I'll do it now.", she said simply.

Charlie beamed. "Did you just say I was right?!", he asked, mock disbelief on his face.

Dani frowned. "You're dripping water on the stairs. That's a hazard. Move along.", she snapped.

Charlie happily wandered into his bathroom and got into his giant shower cubicle. He decided that he wouldn't try to imagine Dani in there, which she must have been not fifteen minutes before, shampooing her hair, running her soapy hands over her body. He grit his teeth. As he looked up, he glimpsed her underwear set drying on the side of the bathtub because they were wet from the pool. He face-palmed. She couldn't go leaving stuff like that out in full view for him. What was more, it dawned on him that if her panties were in the bathroom, she couldn't have been wearing anything under her jeans right now. This was a thought too far. He rested his head against the shower wall and let the water rush over his hair. He gave in and set about relieving himself in the shower, just to earn some respite from the extreme provocation she was subjecting him to. It wouldn't take him long. She would never know.

/

Half an hour later, refreshed in more ways than one, Charlie reappeared at the foot of the stairs. Dani took him in, he was wearing jeans and a casual blue shirt rolled up at the sleeves. The blue of the shirt was darker than that of his eyes but it brought them out nonetheless. She liked seeing him dressed down more and more. She was sitting in the same position she had been when he had gone upstairs, suspiciously immobile.

"So, how did it go with Tidwell?", Charlie asked innocently, keener to hear than he wanted to let on.

"I, uh, haven't called him yet.", replied Dani, "But I'm gonna do it. Right now." She looked like she was gearing up to something mammoth.

"Okay. Well, I'll be outside." Charlie walked off to the kitchen, poured himself some juice and went back outside to give her some privacy.

Dani took a deep breath and pressed the button to dial Tidwell.

"Dani. Thank god, babe. Where the hell have you been?!", Tidwell exclaimed, having jumped at the sound of his phone and then the sight of her name a flashing up on the display. It was a sight he had prayed for all night. He was too relieved to be angry at her.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, everything's fine. I'm sorry, I had my phone on silent," she lied.

"You had it on silent? Where have you been? An all night movie marathon? I came by your place but you didn't answer. You weren't home.", he sighed. "I was so worried babe, I've been going out of my mind." His words came too quickly, giving Dani a headache.

"Don't call me 'babe', please."

"What? It's okay, I'm in my office, there's no one around to listen."

"Don't call me it, period. You know I don 't like it.", she scolded him, irritated at having to fend off his questions even though she knew they were entirely reasonable. He had every right to ask.

"So. You gonna tell me where you were last night or do I got to have you in and interrogate you?", he said feigning a chuckle, his annoyance now peeking through his initial relief although he still tried to hide it.

She thought about lying, saying that she had been asleep in bed at home all night. Tidwell wasn't dumb though, he would have noticed her car was missing if he had been to her place.

"Dani? Dani, goddammit! I'm going to ask you this once, and I want the truth.", he said. "Have you been drinking?"

"No, Tidwell, I have not been drinking."

He pressed her further. "You can tell me, babe, I won't judge. I won't be mad. Jeez, it's completely understandable given what you're dealing with. I just need to know." Tidwell had been out most of the night searching bars for her, certain that he would run into her sooner or later.

He was really pressing her buttons. "First thing: if I really wanted a drink, I'd have one whether I thought you'd get mad or not. Second: I told you once, I have not been drinking. Third: if you dare call me 'babe' one more time, I'm hanging up. Are we clear?" He was silent. "If you must know, I was at Crews' place last night." She didn't care if she pissed him off now, she was ready for a fight.

The line stayed quiet. "Tidwell?", she said.

"You were with Crews.", he stated, as if it were the obvious answer all along, now she had said it. She couldn't hear anger in his voice just yet. "I searched all over LA until 5am for you. Every sleazy bar in the city. I called _hospitals_. And you were with him? You couldn't even call me?! Nice. Real _nice_, Dani.".

_There_ it was, the anger. It hadn't taken long to surface. Dani rolled her eyes. She knew what he was saying was right but she was done with being spoken to like a child. "Are you done?", Dani asked.

He wasn't done. "_All night_? Can I ask what you were doing with him that you didn't even _think_ to call? Or don't I want to know the answer to that one?"

"We were watching tv. We ate pizza. I fell asleep on his sofa. Is that okay? Is there anything there you object to? If there is, I'd love to hear it." Dani challenged him, feeling indignant, ready to snap.

Tidwell didn't know what was worse; the picture of Dani enjoying a cosy night in at Crews' house, or his ongoing suspicion that she was fucking him getting stronger. He stayed silent. He wanted to tell Dani that she should be watching tv and eating pizza at _his_ place. She should be fucking _him_. He hated the thought that she was getting something from Crews that she didn't get from him, even if he chose to believe her when she said it wasn't sex. He hated the thought that Crews might know Dani better than he did, that there was naturally more intimacy between them than he would ever achieve with her. Plus, he just knew that Crews wanted to fuck her, he was a guy, why wouldn't he? The sonofabitch was probably just biding his time.

"Nothing to say?", asked Dani, "I thought not."

She had managed to switch this around on him somehow, Tidwell reflected.

"I just want to take care of you, bay-...Dani. Is that so bad?", he almost whined.

"I was taking care of myself long before you showed up." she answered. "I don't need a bodyguard."

"No, you already have one of those.", Tidwell said bitterly.

They had reached an impasse. Both of them were quiet for what seemed like an age. Dani was fighting the urge to tell him it was over. She knew it would be a pretty shitty thing to do it over the phone.

"Can I come over tonight? We need to talk...", Tidwell was backing down, almost as if he sensed she was ready to pull the trigger.

"You know what? I don't think that's a good idea. I'd prefer to stay home alone tonight. I'll see you at work.", she responded coolly.

"At work? You're not due back until Monday. It's Thursday today. How about tomorrow? Saturday? Or do you already have plans with your partner?", Tidwell would not go down without a fight but he couldn't keep himself from sniping.

"Look, I don't know, okay? I just need some time to myself, is all. I'll call you, alright?", she sighed.

"Fine, Dani. You just take the time you need. Call me when you can fit me in. Oh, and be sure to give my love to Crews." Tidwell hung up on her.

"Asshole." Dani bit the side of her mouth and ran her hand through her hair.

/

Outside, she found Charlie leaning against the black railing, staring out at the view. He had been waiting patiently, feeling a little nervous although he wasn't sure why.

"Hey." Dani said quietly, coming to stand by his side.

"Hey." Charlie replied. He could tell that she was still processing whatever had been said during the phone call. He waited silently until he felt her turn to look at him. "You okay?", he asked, still looking ahead, determined not to crowd her.

"Yeah. Tidwell is pissed, no surprises there.", she replied.

Charlie nodded, raised his eyebrows and looked up into the sky. "Reese, are you hungry? I'm hungry."

"Like you wouldn't believe." Dani agreed.

"Then let's go eat." he smiled.

"Where?" she asked, glad that he hadn't pressed her for details on Tidwell. He must have decided that it wasn't his business. It had more to do with him than he knew, Dani thought.

"Someplace fancy or a pig out joint?" Charlie enquired.

"We can't go fancy with me dressed like this." Dani pointed out, laughing.

"We could swing by your place so you can get changed if you like?" Charlie offered.

Dani wrinkled her nose. "I could go for a burger and a shake." she said.

"Deal. I'll even throw in some fries. But one day I'll take you somewhere fancy." He promised. That sounded a little like the proposal of a date to Dani, but she let it slide.

"I could get used to sick leave." she remarked.

They gathered their things and walked out front to Dani's car, Charlie's latest ride having been wiped out during his quest to get Dani back from Roman's clutches. He tested her by asking if he could drive but whatever new warmth was developing between them clearly did not extend to driving privileges. Once in the car and buckled up, she looked across at him, noticing his aftershave now they were in an enclosed space. He smelled good. She wanted to stick her nose in his neck and breathe him in. For a second she was away, imagining biting his neck and climbing into his lap right there in the car. She wrestled with the thought until she noticed him looking at her in the rear view, his sharp eyes startling her back to reality. Dani was starting to feel decidedly grubby, despite her shower she was wearing yesterday's clothes. Not nine-days-strapped-to-a-chair grubby, but not as fresh as she'd like. She would get to change soon enough she decided, after they'd eaten she would have to make her way home and do some of that thinking she had promised herself, see if she couldn't get some things straight in her mind.

/

As they sat in a booth at a diner they had visited before whilst on duty, Dani listened to Charlie chirruping on merrily and she realized again how much she had missed him. He hadn't got on her nerves once so far. Okay, maybe just once; when he pointed out for the hundredth time since they'd met that the tomato in her burger was in fact a fruit, not a vegetable. Then he continued, telling her that tomatoes were part of the nightshade family, as were potatoes and so, at least two of the components of the meal on her plate were closely related to the poison, deadly nightshade. Dani became concerned that his fruit obsession was going to extend into the vegetable family.

Charlie was also glad to have his partner back, he could never talk like this to Seever. It hadn't occurred to him that he was the only one doing the chatting. Despite all the misfortune and cruelty that had befallen him in his life, sometimes when he looked at his partner he felt like the luckiest guy in the world. Dani's side of the booth was facing a window and he watched the light illuminating her face, shining onto her nose and cheeks so that the subtle smattering of freckles that she had despite her dark complexion were visible. He needed to get his suspension lifted, to be reinstated as a LAPD Detective and to get back to working alongside her, where he belonged. He resolved to give his lawyer a call tomorrow and see how things were going.

Dani watched Charlie's eyes twinkling. She assumed he was just having a good time expounding upon the lightness of being and peace of mind attainable through meditation. He told her about his boulder, the one in the canyons where he went running, and how it was his favourite spot for meditating and just thinking in general. Apart from his orange grove, that was his other favourite place, for its smell, its fruit and, well, for obvious reasons. At the mention of the orange grove they looked at each other nervously, both recalling what they had felt there, and then looked away at the same time as if it hurt to think about it collectively. When the waitress passed by to check everything was okay, she gave Charlie a scolding look, tutted, and turned to Dani.

"Ma'm, I believe your husband is having some fun at your expense." Dani frowned, confused. "You have a little something just here." The waitress gestured to the corner of her own mouth.

Dani brought her napkin to her face. Mayo. Quite a lot of it actually. How long it had been there, she wasn't sure, she tried to recall how long Charlie had been sitting there looking mischievous. She kicked his shin sharply under the table with the pointiest part of her boot and was satisfied when he yelped and nearly bent double in the booth to rub his leg.

"Thank you Kathleen," said Dani, reading the waitress' name badge, "_my husband_ will be sure to tip you generously for taking such good care of us."

"My pleasure, m'am." said Kathleen, moving away and raising an eyebrow at Charlie.

Charlie was resigned to his punishment. It had been worth it. "Hey Reese, did you hear that Kathleen thinks we're married? Do we look married, do you think?", he said excitedly.

"Don't push it Crews, we've had a nice day.", warned Reese.

When the check came, Dani watched Charlie count the bills from his wallet, adding the tip. When he thought he had finished, Dani coughed abruptly, signalling him to carry on. He raised his eyebrows but kept doling out the bills until Dani told him she was satisfied with her eyes. He found there was something incredibly sexy about the way they were communicating, the way she bossed him around and he obeyed without question, all in silence. It was a huge tip but he didn't care, and anyway, it would make Kathleen's week.

"Thanks for the burger. Shall I drop you home?", she said once they were in the parking lot. As Charlie sank into the passenger seat his heart sank also, he didn't want her to go. As they drove, he tried to conjure up a reason she should come back into his house with him but came up with nothing. When she pulled up in his drive he said "You know, you don't have to leave, you're welcome to stay as long as you like. We could go buy you your own bed? I have plenty of guest rooms, we could fix one up for you?" He smarted inside at the sound of his own desperation.

Dani gave him a small smile, "Thanks, but I can't move in with you, Crews. That would be weird. I have a perfectly good apartment of my own that I haven't seen in two weeks and I need to go home one day, so it may as well be today."

Charlie shrugged, defeated. "Well, if you want me...in the night..", he realized how suggestive that sounded, "...if you want to talk, I'll have my cell right by the bed."

"Thanks. But I'll be fine. Anyway, Tidwell might be coming over. He's enough to scare any bogeymen away." Dani smiled but saw Charlie's face drop slightly. He quickly composed a neutral expression, but she had seen it there.

From this, Charlie surmised that Dani's phone call to Tidwell hadn't been as definitive as he had hoped. If Tidwell was coming over they might still work things out. She might want to work things out with him after all, what did he know?

Dani felt his disappointment right in the centre of her chest. "How do you go about letting a guy down gently?", she asked him, more to reassure him than to genuinely ask his advice.

Charlie didn't know whether she was talking about him or Tidwell. "Serve divorce papers on him in a prison cell where he's doing a life stretch for multiple homicides that he didn't commit? I really wouldn't know, Reese.", he said sadly.

"Ouch.", said Dani. Sometimes amongst all the zen bullshit and the positivity, he expressed things so raw that she felt like he had slapped her face. He never failed to catch her off guard.

"I guess you can only tell him how you feel.", Charlie gazed past the windscreen, steeling himself for the '_you and I are just good friends_' speech if it was him that Dani was hoping to let down gently. The speech didn't come.

Charlie looked at Dani for a long time but said nothing. He was feeling like a hypocrite, talking about people telling others how they felt like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was time to go but he felt rooted to the spot, looking at her uncertainly.

"I'll be fine Crews.", she answered the question he hadn't asked.

Charlie unfurled his long limbs and climbed out of the car as she started the engine, even then trying to come up with a reason why she needed to stay with him.

For all his riches he had nothing except the fact that he wanted her close.


	12. Chapter 12

Dani sank back into her own bathtub. Finally. It had been a long time coming.

No Tidwell to test her patience; he hadn't called since their fight on the phone and thankfully he hadn't showed up at her door for round two. She certainly hadn't called him. No Crews to alternate between terrifying, confounding and tormenting her; she hadn't heard from him either since she left him at his place after their burgers. No men, just Dani, her tub, some hot, sudsy water and some peace and quiet in her own home. All she was lacking was something heady and warming in a glass with ice, but she was determined that she wasn't going there.

Dani sat forward in the tub, hugging her knees and feeling her muscles relax. She had admitted to Crews today that she didn't love Tidwell. Saying that out loud had been a big deal. Now that she had acknowledged it, she felt like she was bound to act on it. But on the other hand, she supposed that you didn't have to be in love with the guy you were dating in order to carry on dating him. Things could still get back to normal, she guessed. She could still stop this runaway train before it even left the station. Problem was, she knew that Tidwell considered them to be more than just 'dating'. She had too at one point, and she still thought he was a sweet guy but that initial desire had now all but evaporated. It had felt safe and secure at first, which had been so novel to her at the time, a chance to live like other people did. But she now felt like she didn't need it any longer, she wanted her independence back again. She didn't need to feel like other people did. Roman had shaken her badly but she knew that she would get past it. So by staying with Tidwell, knowing that love was unlikely to suddenly grow, she was deceiving him. Tidwell had always treated her right and she owed him the same. From the way he had hung up on her during their last conversation, she guessed he was pretty much through with her in any case. She knew it was for the best, they just had to put an end to things with dignity, no kicking and screaming. They still had to work together, after all. They all had to work together.

She decided that it was more of a problem if you were in love with someone who you weren't dating. That could prove difficult, if that was really what was happening here. She supposed that it might all just blow over. Her relationship with Tidwell and her thing for Crews were two different issues, she decided, and they should be treated as such. Even if the onset of the latter had opened her eyes to the many holes in the former. Ending things with Tidwell did not mean that she should rush headlong into complicating matters with her partner. She should ride it out, there was no rush. If Crews made a move, then she would consider an appropriate response at the time. She didn't think it was likely given the chaste way he had behaved the previous night. She wouldn't run to him as soon as Tidwell was off the scene, giving in to all the crazy urges she had been having and winding up in an even deeper mess than she was in right now. That was something the _old_ Dani would have done. One disaster after the other. She didn't want to wind up having to avoid her boss _and_ her partner all day at work.

Dani laid back and closed her eyes. This was good. This was the thinking of a responsible adult for once, not the behaviour of a frightened alcoholic lurching between one bad decision and the next. She congratulated herself on this and continued her long soak before scrubbing herself clean, removing the layer of skin that had come into contact with Roman. She would emerge from this bath a new person, she thought.

This positive frame of mind continued all evening. Crews must be rubbing off on her. She fixed herself something light to eat, did some laundry and called her mom. She was grateful for the return of normality. Even when she laid back in bed, switched off the lamp on the nightstand and thought she saw Roman's slimy frame scuttle by the far wall, she wasn't scared. "Bring it on, motherfucker. You can't hurt me now.", she whispered into the dark.

She didn't need a drink. She didn't need a guy. Dani was determined to take back control of her life, which was both an understandable and constructive way to respond to having been taken hostage, she decided. She would not fall to pieces. She would not seek refuge in inappropriate relationships.

Just then her phone beeped.

It was Crews. She opened the message.

"Did you realize that you left your underwear in my bathroom?"

Dani raised both eyebrows and propped herself up on her elbow. She read it again. That definitely constituted flirting. She laughed at how he was much bolder over text message than in person. This was kind of naughty of him. As far as he knew, she could be with Tidwell right now. She wondered if he was in bed too. He was obviously thinking about her. Now she was thinking about him thinking about her thinking about him, which, she imagined, was exactly what he intended. It turned her on.

For all her sensible reflection earlier on the situation with Crews and her resolution that she didn't need some guy in her life in order for her to keep it together, she bit her lip and started to slip into fantasy once again. No, she didn't _need_ a guy, but she was ready to admit that she just really _wanted_ Crews. It wasn't going to go away. Despite her need for control, she knew that this was one thing she couldn't contain. The only way she could assert herself over these feelings was to go get him and make it happen herself.

She composed many responses to his text message in her mind, some innocent, some slightly suggestive and some downright filthy. She decided that the middle ground was best. "I left them there for the next time we take a swim.", she tapped into her phone and pressed 'send'.

His reply was immediate. "Tomorrow?", she read from the screen.

Dani smiled and put her phone back on the nightstand.


	13. Chapter 13

Dani awoke late the next day, feeling rested and relaxed for the first time in forever. She hadn't suffered nightmares, only dreams of her dad teaching her to ride the bike her parents had given her for her fifth birthday. She had even heard the bike's silver bell tinkle in her sleep. She loved that bike and she had loved the look of pride in her dad's eyes when she finally managed to peddle a few feet without the wobbles turning to grazed knees and tears of frustration. It was one of the only times she ever recalled having pleased her father, even though she tried consistently to get his attention throughout her childhood. By the time she was twelve she had figured that antagonizing him was far more effective in getting him to notice her, and so the alternative dynamic of the father-daughter relationship was set in stone. It had gone on so long that Dani had even forgotten why she felt the need to piss him off at every turn, it was just something she did, to punish him for not being a normal father she guessed.

Thoughts of her father inevitably led to thoughts of her mother. Kowtowed to the fiery irishman for decades, she had always been there attempting to make up for the disregard that her husband had shown her daughter. She would cry when Dani got into fights in the school yard, when as a teenager she would return from 'study dates' with her friends smelling of beer, when she was spotted hanging in parts of town with the older guys that her father had expressly warned her off of. But somehow, although her mother always reproached Dani for her behaviour, she seemed to understand exactly why she was doing it even if her daughter didn't at the time. She cried again when Dani joined the LAPD, fearful that the daughter would go the same way as her father. And she had, to a certain degree. She drank too much, she cursed too much and the pressures of the job contributed to her generally destructive nature. But Dani never, ever took her anger out on her mother. She always knew who the bad guy was in all of this and now she had been proven right.

Dani sighed. Thinking about all this was a sure-fire way to bring her down again. She got up, drank her coffee and donned her sweats ready to visit the gym. It was important to get back into her normal routine. While she pedalled hard on the exercise bike, her mind flitted to Crews and their exchange the night before. She still intended to grab him by the scruff of the neck and take control of the situation but there were a few things she needed to attend to first. The gym was proving harder than she ever remembered, Dani not having been in weeks. The cardio was particularly gruelling but she figured that this kind of self abuse was much healthier than the others she used to indulge in.

She saved her shower for when she had arrived back home. Whilst towelling herself dry she inspected her lip. There was a small scab there but the worst had passed, so she figured it was now safe to go visit her mom.

/

Her mother showered Dani with kisses, even before she was through the door.

"Okay, okay! Mom! Let me go!", Dani yelled.

Her mom relented once they were in the kitchen. "This is what happens when you don't come by for a month.", the dark, diminutive woman muttered.

"It hasn't been a month, mom.", Dani moaned.

"More or less. Now let me see. You're thin. And tired. And what is this?!" Her mother was the same height as Dani and had eyes like a hawk, she had zoned in on her split lip almost immediately.

"It's nothing mom, it happened at work. I was arresting this drunk guy who went crazy and lashed out. Happens all the time. It's fine, it doesn't even hurt." Dani tapped her mouth with her fingers to demonstrate that it was nearly healed.

"Always fighting. Even with men. And where was your partner when you were fighting? Where was the Charlie?", her mother raised her eyebrows, not impressed.

"Mom, he was there. He got hit too.", Dani assured her.

"Did he hit back?", her mother demanded.

"Oh yeah. He hit him, mom."

"Good. Working with a woman in that job, my daughter, he has responsibilities." Her mom still didn't think it was right that her daughter ran around with guns and criminals, and men, for that matter.

"Believe me mom, he takes his responsibilities very seriously.", Dani smirked slightly at her understatement.

Her mother read that smirk in a different way, although in actual fact she wasn't too wide of the mark. She narrowed her eyes. "When is he coming over to dinner, the Charlie?" She had a habit of using the definite article in front of someone's name when she either didn't know a person, or didn't like them. Dani knew her spoken English was almost perfect, so she didn't understand why she had retained this little linguistic quirk.

"He's not coming to dinner, mom. It's just work.", Dani rolled her eyes.

"He wouldn't like my cooking? What kind of a man is he? Your father's partners were always here. _They_ ate my food."

Dani paled at the mention of her father. She would rather discuss Crews with her mother than get onto the subject of her dad.

"Charlie follows a special diet, mom. He eats a lot of fruit.", she was hoping this might put her off. She knew that Crews would eat almost anything set in front of him and her mother was a phenomenal cook. She just couldn't handle the thought of Charlie sitting at their table charming her mother and her mother sitting opposite him, lecturing Crews on his responsibilities towards her daughter.

"So what? I cook fruit. I'll make him chicken stew with pomegranates and rice with dates. He'll like it, the Charlie.", her mother shrugged. Dani's temperament was attributed to having Jack Reese as a father but people overlooked the fact that her mother was plenty feisty in her own right. "The Charlie has a wife who cooks him fruit?", she asked, smelling a challenge.

"No, mom, the Charlie has no wife.", Dani answered tiredly.

"Then he will need a good meal. Men can't cook.", she said as if this was all she needed to say to win the argument.

"Okay mom, I'll ask him.", Dani intended to do nothing of the sort but she wanted hot close the subject.

/

Back home again once her mother had force fed her and made her swear that they would see one another again before the month was out, Dani focused on her next task. Tidwell. She intended to have a mature and honest discussion with him about the state of their relationship. She texted him and he said he would come by her place at eight.

When he arrived, carrying the biggest bouquet of red roses she had ever seen, Dani realized that this wasn't going to be straightforward.

"Dani. Listen. Before you say anything please hear me out. I know I've been a jerk and I'm sorry. I needed to cut you some slack after Roman and I know I just made things worse but you gotta understand why.". With that he offered the flowers to her.

_Shit_, she thought. Dani had imagined him coming over here in the same mood he had been in when they had spoken on the phone, ready to call time on him and her. She wasn't going to get the easy way out. She took the roses from him, knowing that she didn't have a vase big enough. This was overkill, she thought.

"I should have called you the other night. I didn't think. I'm stupid and selfish. I apologize.", Dani could count all the times she had apologized to someone in her life on one hand. This was all part of the new leaf she was intent on turning over. "But Tidwell, you have to see that things aren't right between us.".

"No. I know they're not. But they will be. We can get it back, Dani", he said hopefully.

"I think it might be too late, Tidwell.", she said quietly.

"Dani. Please. Just give me a chance. Don't make any hasty decisions. Listen, I can't...I just can't lose you all over again. I thought you were gone...Roman...I thought he had...but he didn't...and you're still here and I'm so, so glad...", and at this his voice broke and Dani could see that he was barely holding it together.

She was a little shocked. "Tidwell...I don't think..."

He jumped in before she could continue. "Dani. Just take some time to think, that's all I'm saying. Take this week, rest up and when you get back to work, we'll talk, work things out. Just don't decide now when eveything's still so fresh. Give yourself a break."

Dani looked at Tidwell and saw for the first time how much all this had affected him. She had only really thought about how she was feeling and maybe how Crews had reacted. Nobody had signed Tidwell off from work, yet he had been through it too. He would have had to pretend to everyone at work that his concern for her had been confined to the concern that a Captain would show for one of his detectives. She had seen him as an annoyance ever since the orange grove and she suddenly hated herself for it. He was close to tears. She didn't want to see him cry.

Dani thought about how resolved to end things she had been earlier. She still knew it was the right thing but she just couldn't do it. Not right now.

"I can't make any promises.", she said quietly, equal parts despising herself for giving in and wanting to hug him for caring so much.

"And I'm not asking you to, Dani.", he replied. "Just take some time."

She nodded her assent, still at odds with what she was doing. She saw him visibly relax and sit back in her sofa, relieved to have won a stay of execution. She wished he had just come over all guns blazing, looking for a fight so she could have let him have it right back. But he hadn't, he was clearly hurting, he clearly cared deeply about her; there weren't too many people like that in her life. She was going to have to be gentle about this.

Dani got up and took the roses to the sink. She fixed Tidwell a drink and they changed the subject, him eager to show her they could get back to normal and her just grateful that he had pulled himself together somewhat. He still looked like he had stuff on his mind.

"So, what you been doing with yourself this week? Keeping busy?", he asked.

She told him she had hit the gym, how much her thighs hurt already, that she'd visited her mom, the hard time she got over her busted lip.

"You seen that partner of yours?", he enquired innocently.

At the mention of Crews' name, Dani couldn't help but look guilty. She could feel it crawling up her neck onto her face. "No, not since yesterday when we last talked.", she replied referring to their fight on the phone. She was expecting Tidwell to say sorry for the way he had reacted to her staying with Crews. Tidwell didn't apologize and Dani was part irritated and part relieved, because he had been half right after all. She left the sofa to go to the bathroom and take the opportunity to clear her head.

Tidwell gave a long sigh. He was glad he had managed to buy himself some time to turn things around. He wasn't through saying all he wanted to say to her. There was important ground they needed to cover. But she had acted so weird when he had asked after Crews. He bit his lip. _Was she lying to_ _him? _If she was, then all was lost. This thing with Crews was driving him nuts alright. Tidwell glanced at Dani 's cell phone, which she had left on the arm of the sofa. He snapped his eyes away again. He couldn't. _Could he?_ Once the idea had occurred to him, he knew that he'd do it, even though he spent a good thirty seconds pretending to himself that he wouldn't. He grabbed Dani's phone and navigated to her text messages with an uncertain thumb. If she caught him then things would be over for sure. But if he found nothing then he could assure himself that there was nothing to worry about between them other than the aspects of their relationship that were within his power to change. What he couldn't deal with was the thought that he needed to fight Crews for her without even knowing it for sure.

Tidwell scrolled through Dani's messages. The top one was from himself, agreeing to come by her apartment tonight. The two messages below it were from Crews. _"Tomorrow?_", read the first one. Tidwell shrugged. He hurried to the second message.

He froze._ "Did you realize that you left your underwear in my bathroom?"_

Tidwell felt his temples and his jaw pulsing. "Son of a..." He wanted to flip to Dani's sent messages, to get all the parts of this puzzle, just so it was all there laid out before him, the blindingly obvious confirmed at last. He heard the bathroom door close and hastily put the phone back where he had found it.

Dani had come back into the room and she was talking to him but her words weren't penetrating. She was lying. _Biology..the bullpen called it_. The most frustrating thing about it was that he couldn't stand up and call her on it. He wasn't willing to admit how he had come across the evidence. He was so mad he couldn't think straight.

Dani noticed that something was off with Tidwell. "You okay?", she asked, frowning.

"Yeah. Tired, I guess. Working hard - two detectives down.", he managed to choke the words out. He thought about all the things he had wanted to talk through with her. What was the point? Crews had probably already said it to her but she wasn't letting on. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction of hearing it from him too, as if he had swallowed all her protestations of innocence. He just wanted out of there.

Tidwell made his excuses, a little abruptly Dani thought, but she guessed that he had got what he came for and was determined not to push her too far. Mainly she was glad that he wasn't going to try to stay the night. As he left he didn't try to kiss her cheek like she had been expecting; perhaps he really did appreciate that things were on a hiatus between them. Still, something nagged at her as she closed her door behind him.


	14. Chapter 14

Dani pulled into Crew's driveway excited to see him and feeling just a little bit reckless.

She was puzzled to find a powder blue convertible VW beetle parked just outside his door, which was wide open. Cute, but not the type of car Charlie and Dani had been cooing over on the internet a few nights before, so she doubted it was his. Dani carried the paper bag full of chinese food cartons she had brought, tentatively stepping over his threshold and about to call out and admonish him for leaving the door both unlocked _and_ open.

Charlie stood a few feet away chatting happily to a woman who had her back to Dani. The woman was wearing tiny denim cut-off shorts, a deep blue cashmere shawl over a loose white, flowing vest, pretty sandals and plenty of jangling bangles at her wrist. She had legs that went on forever, blond highlights in her long, tousled sandy hair and Dani had decided that she hated her even before she turned around.

"Oh! Hey, Reese. I didn't know you were coming over. Hey, let me introduce you to my friend, Cristina.", said Charlie affably. "Cristina, this is my partner, Dani Reese. Cristina's an artist.", he explained cheerfully.

Cristina turned to greet Dani, displaying a perfect white smile and beautiful big eyes, her irises somewhere between hazel and honey. "Um, a _struggling_ painter, actually.", Cristina said modestly. "So you're a detective? Wow, tough job. You must have fun too though, working with Charlie."

Dani's initial hope that Crews was commissioning some artwork by this woman to brighten up his huge, echoing house was immediately dashed by Cristina's last comment. They clearly knew each other, and from the look of her, Dani could guess how. Cristina was delightful. Dani wanted to rip her head off right there.

"Oh yeah. It's mostly all fun, in fact.", Dani said politely but still somewhat sarcastically. She looked over at Crews. He was wearing a steel-gray suit that Dani didn't recall having seen before, a blue tie and an off-white shirt. He smouldered in that suit, Dani thought. He was clean-shaven and he looked as though he might have also had his hair trimmed. A far cry from how he had looked when she had last seen him. Not better, just smarter, and very, very hot. Suddenly it dawned on her. It was Saturday night. Crews was taking Cristina on a date. Cristina looked fabulous, but somehow didn't seem like she was destined for the same place as Crews. She looked casual. Maybe that was just how artists rolled, concluded Dani. Dani wanted the earth to swallow her. She kicked herself for not having called first before coming over. Reckless, she thought with a rueful smile.

"I'm sorry, am I interrupting? Were you just about to go out?", Dani said nervously.

Crews had spotted the bag of take-out that Dani was holding, smelling the food inside.

"Oh, no - no.", exclaimed Cristina, her turn to feel slightly uncomfortable. "I was just passing and thought I'd stop by to say hi. Oh, and Charlie...to pick up my..."

"Right, right - sure, I'll go get it.", said Charlie nodding quickly, smiling at Cristina. He turned to Dani. "Is some of that for me?", he gestured to the bag in Dani's hand.

"Um, yes - I mean no. You have company. I should have called. I'll come back another day." Dani was almost stammering, she wanted to get out of there immediately. As soon as she did she was going to head-charge a wall through shame, she decided.

"Oh, no, Dani, don't leave on my account. I really was just going.", Cristina insisted. As much as Dani despised her, she knew she had no cause, Cristina seemed nice enough.

"Yeah, Reese. There's no need to go. Give me that.", said Charlie, stepping forward to grab the bag. Dani stubbornly kept hold of the handle and a slight tug of war resulted. Charlie could see that Dani was thrown off balance by the situation. He wasn't exactly enjoying himself either; this was awkward. Both of them still holding the paper bag by its handle, Charlie extended his thumb and stroked it across the inside of Dani's wrist. He meant to reassure her but his gesture only served to annoy her more and he saw her eyes spark anger. "Hey, let go, it's going to split.", laughed Charlie, and Dani gave up, conscious of causing a weird scene in front of Cristina.

Charlie looked relieved and took hold of the bag at the base. "I'll be right back, Cristina." He hurried off to the kitchen with the food.

Great. Now he had left Dani alone in his lobby with this woman to make small talk. They smiled at each other the way that strangers did in this kind of situation.

Charlie practically ran to his kitchen, set the bag on the counter and took to hurriedly searching the top drawers of his cabinets that housed pens and random objects. He hated to think what kind of conversation might be going on between the two women he had left behind and he wanted to get back there and put an end to it as soon as he could. He had been pleased to open his door to Cristina, but this wasn't any kind of pre-arranged date. He'd only ever met her three times, although he would admit that they knew each other pretty intimately. Cristina wasn't typical of the women he had been running around with since he left jail but he had met her through that crowd - the party girls and the badge bunnies. Her sister _was_ a bona fide badge bunny and Charlie had got talking to Cristina at her party. She was slightly offbeat, bohemian and enchantingly beautiful, and he found her interesting. Cristina had later come round for dinner, ended up in the pool with him after a lot of tequila and had her hands inside his shorts within ten minutes of hitting the water. They had spent the rest of the weekend in bed together. The third time they met had been a few weeks later when Cristina had invited him to the first exhibition of her paintings. She was very talented and Charlie had enjoyed himself but by that time he had recognized that he was carrying a serious torch for his partner. Cristina had given him a heated kiss goodnight on that occasion and promised to call him to arrange another date. He hadn't pursued things even though he liked her and now suddenly here she was again a couple of months later. Except that she was also here to collect an ornate lapiz lazuli and silver drop earring that she had left behind during the wild weekend when he and she had become properly acquainted. Charlie rummaged furiously through the kitchen, he had seen the earring just recently, it had to be there. He hoped to god that she wasn't explaining any of this history to Dani while they waited.

Dani had already told Cristina how she liked her car and was now floundering for a new topic of conversation.

"So, you're colleagues?", led Cristina.

"Yeah. Partners.", Dani corrected her. That sounded closer, more proprietary.

"So, Charlie says he's on vacation. It's nice that you guys hang out outside work too.", breezed Cristina.

"Vacation? That's what he told you, huh?", smirked Dani. She wondered if Cristina was fishing to define the extent of Dani's relationship with Charlie. No, she decided, Cristina seemed the genuinely friendly, easygoing type. A little like Crews. They were well suited. Dani didn't like her at all.

Cristina wrinkled her brow a little at Dani's last comment, which was cryptic to her, but Dani was spared from being asked to explain when Charlie bounded back over to where they stood.

He handed Cristina the earring, half trying to shield it from Dani's view. He would really rather that she didn't see it.

Unhelpfully, Cristina held it up and dangled it in the light. "Oh, thanks so much Charlie, they're my favourite pair, I was scared this one was gone forever!", she said gleefully.

Bam. There it was, confirmation of _exactly_ what was going on here. Charlie cringed inwardly.

Dani felt sick. There she had been all week, half considering starting something with her partner and it had not once occurred to her that he might already be involved with someone else. She had heard things about him, sure, that he did quite well for himself with airheads and girls attracted by his money, but Cristina seemed different somehow. She could actually imagine them dating. She was taller than Dani, a little younger than Dani and completely different to Dani in almost every way. Her sunny disposition, for one. Why had he never mentioned her?

The inconsequential chat between the three of them continued for a while, until Cristina realized that Charlie hadn't offered her a seat or a drink and that he and Dani were probably waiting to eat. "Dani, it was great to meet you. I have to go.", she said pleasantly.

"I'll see you out.", Charlie offered, glad that the encounter was finally at an end. He put his hand to the small of Cristina's back, but wasn't touching her, and guided her out. Dani was left alone to consider what an idiot she was. She crept up to the door jam to watch them together outside.

Although Dani couldn't hear, Cristina was telling Charlie that it was good to see him again, that she hadn't meant to leave it so long but that she had been busy at the upscale gift shop and gallery where she worked which was expanding. Charlie agreed to call her one of these days so they could go out to eat, non committal about the timing. Before she hopped into her car, Cristina grabbed Charlie by the tie, pulled him close and kissed him full on the lips.

_That's not the first time they've done that_, Dani thought to herself. She had seen quite enough and stalked off over to the sofa to fume silently.

Charlie waved Cristina off and looked to the heavens. He then entered the house sheepishly. Dani was sitting quietly on his sofa, affecting nonchalance.

"So, Cristina seems nice.", she called out, feigning indifference and barely looking in his direction.

"Yeah, she is.", Charlie said simply, not giving her anything more. He made to walk into the kitchen to get the food.

"Crews. You have lipstick on your mouth.", she called coolly before he could get away.

Charlie guiltily put his fingers to his lips and wiped. His hand came away clean but the fact he had reacted spoke volumes. He felt like he was in trouble and he really regretted that Dani had seen all that.

Dani was furious at herself. She was furious at Crews for making her feel this way. She wanted to throw him up against the wall, hit him, fling the goddamned Chinese take-out at his new suit and kiss him madly, in that order. They'd collapse to the floor in a mess of noodles, hoisin sauce and sex. How dare he advise her to break up with Tidwell when all the while he had something going with this Cristina woman?

"You know, I would have just left, I don't want to cramp your style.", said Dani.

"Reese, you heard her, she was just passing. Plus, you brought me food. You know that's the way to a guy's heart.", he smiled at her, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

"Oh really? I though that was through his pants.", Dani replied sarcastically.

"Well, we could try that too, but can we eat first? I'm starving.", he ventured.

Dani gave him a dark look. Flirting wasn't on the agenda tonight, he concluded.

"Uh, you know, Cristina's just a friend of mine.", he blurted, knowing that he might as well address this head on if he had any hope of rectifying things at all. "We went on like two dates a couple of months back.", he tried to play it down.

"The kind of dates where her jewellery winds up lost in your house, huh?", she said knowingly.

She had him there. Charlie didn't know what to say.

"It's okay Charlie, you don't have to explain yourself to me. I'm just your partner and in any case, Cristina seems really great. You should go for it.". She did not mean a single word of this, but she couldn't help the words from tumbling from her mouth. She felt like she had to save face. She was only glad that she was managing to prevent the bitterness she tasted in her throat from creeping into her voice.

Charlie looked at her. She didn't sound pissed at him but he knew she definitely was. How was she doing that? He realized that he wasn't going to be able to make this right and tried instead to change the subject. "So, do you want to eat?", he asked.

Dani shrugged and got up, followed him to the kitchen. They shared the food in the boxes, which was no longer very hot. Charlie noticed that Dani wasn't eating much. He had been playing this all so carefully but somehow he had managed to foul it up all the same. He could feel her shutters going down, leaving him on the outside again.

Dani was lost in thought and suddenly realized that she hadn't said a word to Crews in minutes. She couldn't let him see how much this was bothering her. She realized what a massive sacrifice of her pride would be required to ever make a move on him. She looked up and tried to find something normal to talk about, "What's with the suit, Crews?", she asked.

"I had to go see Marquez.", he said between mouthfuls.

"As in your attorney?"

"Yeah. Because they found Roman's body.", he said calmly.

"What?!", Dani slammed down her fork. "When?"

"Yesterday, by all accounts. They found what was left of his car, burnt out, with his body inside.". He was remarkably calm. "I thought you knew. I thought that was why you showed up here tonight with food...to talk."

She hadn't turned up tonight intending to talk. Not about Roman, anyway. "I had no idea.", she uttered, mind whirring. "Wait. Tidwell was at my place last night. He must have known already, right? He didn't even mention it."

It was Charlie's turn to feel the flare of jealousy. Tidwell, who he had hoped she had let down gently. "Huh. Yeah, he knew. Maybe he didn't want to talk about work. Did you figure things out with him?". He was less interested in Roman than finding out what was happening between Reese and the Captain.

"Uh, yeah, I mean no, not really. We're on a break or something.", she didn't want Crews to know that she had been weak and had allowed Tidwell to wear her down. "But this isn't work, this is personal. The guy kills my father and then winds up dead himself and Tidwell doesn't even mention it?"

Charlie pondered couples who took 'breaks'. They hardly ever got back together after the break in his experience. He wondered why Dani hadn't just told Tidwell it was over. It bothered him.

Dani went over the events of the previous evening. Tidwell had been emotional and then weird with her. She worked things through. Tidwell hadn't told her about Roman because he was trying to figure out if she knew already. He had asked her if she had seen Crews. He looked like he hadn't believed her when she said that she hadn't. He was testing her. The only way she could have known about Roman was if Crews had told her. Tidwell would have been able to tell if she knew about Roman and therefore if she had been seeing Crews without disclosing it. She must have passed his test.

For him to keep something like that from her for his own personal motives was sick. She felt her trademark anger rising. She was going to rip his balls off.

"Maybe he thought you needed a break from thinking about Roman?", Charlie asked.

"No. I know why he did it. And I'm gonna kill him. But it doesn't matter, let me handle it. You have more important things to worry about. What did Marquez tell you?", she waved him off.

Dani was now truly in a foul mood, he thought. She had stopped eating altogether and the subject had put him off his food too. "Just that. That Roman had been found dead and that there would be an autopsy on whatever was left of him. Marquez says that as long as the autopsy supports the account I gave to the brass, I should be in a good position. And it will."

"But you told them you hit him. When they find that he died of a broken windpipe they'll come straight after you.", she whispered.

"Self defence.", said Charlie. "And if he had died on the spot, why would his men have let me go?"

They both fell quiet. "Are you scared?", she asked him after a while, looking into his eyes for an answer.

_"_The whole secret of existence is to have no fear.", he replied.

Evasive zen bullshit. That meant he was scared, Dani thought.

There was no hanging out tonight, no sleepover. Nothing had gone to plan. Dani claimed tiredness and left, feeling confused once again. Cristina's appearance had truly sucked the wind from her sails, hotly followed by the realization that Roman could still take her partner away from her, even from beyond the grave. The fact that Tidwell had lied to her, or at best kept important information from her, so callously was the final straw.

She put her foot down in the car on the way home and felt as though she had steam billowing from her ears.


	15. Chapter 15

Charlie cleared the plates from the table and filled the dishwasher. He didn't like the way the evening had panned out. Reese had been distant and reserved after days of them getting on great. Maybe she was going to go back to Tidwell, even though it seemed she had never left him in the first place, he guessed glumly.

She hadn't believed him when he had tried to reassure her about Cristina. The whole reason why he wasn't with Cristina was because he wanted Dani. The whole reason why he wasn't with Dani, quite apart from the fact that he had never been sure that she wanted him back, was because he wanted her _too much_. A guy like him couldn't afford to have someone he cared about so much so close to him. That's why her and Tidwell had been so convenient, for a while. Charlie keeping his distance had been his way of protecting her. Close enough to guard but not close enough to hold. But they had figured it out and got to her anyway, used his love for her against him and now he had blood on his hands. Again. Now he figured that he had nothing much to lose, he could probably take better care of her the closer she was. And he wouldn't let her out of his sight ever again, if only he knew for sure that was what she wanted too.

He looked around his cavernous house. His living room was more the size of a hotel lobby but it was empty. He didn't think he needed more furniture; he felt it needed more people. One person in particular would do.

He was calling Dani before he realized what he was doing.

"Hey. It's me. I just wanted to check that you're okay. You were kind of quiet this evening.", he said, not having planned a better opener than that.

"I'm okay, Crews.", came her reply.

"Okay as in _okay_, or okay as in you _don't want to talk about it_?", he asked, cocking his head for her answer.

"As in _okay_.", was all she said back. Did that mean she did want to talk about it?

"I meant to ask you when you were over; you wanna come car shopping with me tomorrow? I know a guy with a dealership who will open early especially for me.", he tried to tempt her.

"Car shopping? No, I can't tomorrow. I said I'd take my mom to brunch.", Dani said dryly.

"Oh. Okay. I guess mom's come first...", Charlie couldn't hide the disappointment in his voice.

"Why don't you ask Cristina to go car shopping with you?", Dani couldn't help herself, she was still mad.

"Because the only _car shopping_ I want to do is with you.", he said frankly, aware that's in 'car shopping' they had just coined a new euphemism. She knew what he meant alright, he thought, but she just wasn't playing ball.

Dani wondered why he couldn't just come out and say exactly what he wanted to say for once. He was just as stubborn as she was, Dani concluded. She said nothing, wishing she could only just swallow her pride and agree to whatever it was he wasn't asking her and stop pretending.

"Okay, well I won't go tomorrow. I'll wait for you, Reese." He let the silence on the line hang heavy with the dual purpose of their conversation. "Will I see you before you go back to work?" Even that was less of a straight question and more of a plea.

"Maybe.", she allowed him that much. She smiled faintly, glad that he couldn't see her.

Charlie went to bed and lay awake staring out into the gloom, one hand propping up his head, the other grazing his stomach, thinking about car shopping with Dani Reese.


	16. Chapter 16

Charlie waited for Dani to make an appearance all day on Sunday. He kept his phone nearby at all times in case she called. He felt like they had stuff to make up over, even though they hadn't been fighting. This whole thing was making him miserable. He had to do something to distract himself, so he called the car dealership guy. That didn't take as long as he had hoped, in that the dealer would agree to anything Charlie said so desperate was he to gain his custom, so he resolved to go for another run and a break on his boulder. He even left a note on the door in case Reese came by while he was gone. When he dragged himself back up the driveway an hour and a half later, soaked in sweat and out of breath, he saw no car waiting and his shoulders slumped as he ripped the note down dejectedly and pushed the door open.

He started when he saw Ted sitting on the sofa, surrounded by his bags and case.

"Ted!", he exclaimed. "Am I glad to see you! Welcome home!". Charlie skipped over to him and wanted to give him a hug but thought better of it since he was soaked to the skin.

"Buenos dias, Charlie.", Ted drawled. "Good to see you too. Boy, am I beat. I sat next to a mom and her two screaming kids on the plane all the way back from Madrid. I almost had to bite the headrest of the seat in front to stop myself screaming. "

Ted did look awful. He had dark circles under his eyes and his face looked kind of baggier than usual. Salt and pepper stubble bristled all over his face and his eyes were bloodshot from the flight. Altogether he looked even more hangdog than usual. Charlie suggested that Ted get some sleep but Ted was adamant that he needed to see it through until the evening in order to get his body clock back in line.

"You're not working today?", asked Ted.

"Nope. Not working.", Charlie left it at that for now, he didn't want to overwhelm the poor guy as soon as he got home. "It's great to have you back. Want to hang out? You can tell me all about your trip.", he suggested brightly.

"Sure. That would be great.", smiled Ted, grateful for such a warm welcome. "I'll grab a shower and then you can have your gifts too."

"Gifts?!", chirped Charlie, as excited as a small boy on his birthday. He scampered up the stairs to his bathroom to freshen up, pleased that he now had someone else to concentrate on other than Reese.

/

"So how was Spain?", asked Charlie as they sat in the kitchen, both now showered but only one of them looked refreshed.

"Spain is amazing.", Ted looked wistful. "The heat and the light and the food. The women - my god, Charlie..."

"Did you find Olivia?", Charlie asked.

"Um, yes. Yes, I did.", Ted replied.

"Has she come home too?", said Charlie, hopefully.

"No. Olivia's still in Seville. Things...got complicated.", Ted looked sullen.

"It didn't go so well?"

Ted gave a huge sigh. "Things went great, better than I ever could have dreamed of. But then they went terrible and I...I just had to come home...oh...I don't want to talk about it, Charlie". He looked at the table.

"Nobody wants to talk about anything these days." Charlie said, almost to himself.

"But I think I might have upset your father." Ted mentioned cautiously. "He might show up here at some point."

"Huh.", replied Charlie. "Well, I hope he's not gonna make me shoot him again."

"He'll probably be the one doing the shooting, Charlie. Only it'll be me that he's looking for this time." Ted looked sheepish.

Charlie cocked his head. There was clearly a tale to be told here, but before he could attempt to draw it out of his roommate there was a knock at the door. Charlie's thoughts suddenly snapped back to Reese.

He was disappointed to open the door to a guy wearing a cap carrying a clipboard.

"Delivery for a Mr Crews from LA Luxury Autos?", said the guy.

His disappointment was short-lived. Charlie beamed as he caught sight of the car he had discussed with the dealer only this morning. The midnight blue Jaguar XK Coupé sat gleaming in his driveway and Charlie signed the paperwork eagerly, took the keys and stalked out towards it. Ted came up behind him, stepping bleary-eyed into the light.

"Holy Mary...", Ted uttered.

"Isn't she beautiful?", asked Charlie. "It's a real grown-up's car!", he exclaimed.

"What happened to your other car? That one was hardly a toy." Ted looked at Charlie then back to the sleek frame of the car, shielding his sore eyes from the sun.

"It's a very long story."

"You don't want to talk about it?", guessed Ted, sounding sad.

Charlie looked at the crumpled figure in front of him. He was itching to jump inside that car and take it for a spin. The keys were practically burning a hole in his hand. But the sight of Ted so forlorn pulled at his heart strings. "C'mon. Let's get you a beer.", Charlie suggested, gesturing back towards the house.

"Beer? I have a better idea.", said Ted.

Charlie cast a longing glance over at the car as he shut the door behind him. It would keep, he guessed.

Ted set to rummaging around inside his case. "Gifts.", he muttered. A minute later he was carefully placing three bottles of red wine and a bottle of aged-looking Spanish cognac on the kitchen table before Charlie.

"I don't know much about wine...", started Charlie.

"You don't need to. All you need to know is that these are probably the finest wines you'll ever taste.", pronounced Ted triumphantly.

"It's kind of early", said Charlie, but he knew his friend needed it. "But shall we open one?"

"Well, really we should drink them as an accompaniment to a good meal...but what the hell", said Ted, shrugging. With that one slight note of reservation he began to search for two glasses. "In Spain they drink at any time of day, I saw a guy in a bar drinking wine with his breakfast."

Ted opened the bottle, poured two glasses and held his up to Charlie. "Salud", he said.

"Salud", replied Charlie.

Ted was right, the wine was fantastic. The fact that it was fruit-based was not lost on Charlie. "How can they make fermented grapes taste like cherries?", he asked Ted in wonderment. But Charlie needed food too as ever, so he fixed them some sandwiches. He noticed Ted lighten up as soon as the alcohol entered his system. Half a bottle down and he was ready to spill, Charlie judged.

"So are things definitely over with Olivia?", Charlie asked.

Ted gave a huge shrug. "I just don't know Charlie. It's her decision. I've told her how I feel and I've given her some space, a whole ocean's-worth of space. Nobody can say I haven't given her enough space. I guess it's the lot of the lovelorn to wait." He propped an elbow on the table and rested his chin in his palm.

Charlie was listening very closely to Ted's words. "Lovelorn, huh?" Ted had it bad, concluded Charlie, but so did he. "So what do you do with yourself while you're waiting? How do you distract yourself?"

"I drink fine wines.", answered Ted plainly.

"And if Olivia doesn't come through for you?" Charlie didn't mean to alarm Ted unduly but it was just his own anxiety over Dani poking through.

"Then I'll drink more wine.", said Ted looking beaten already.

"Hey, I'm sure she'll call. Things will be okay." Charlie reassured him. "Women, huh?" Charlie sighed deeply and mirrored Ted's stance, chin in his palm and elbow on the table, the wine now taking its effect on him too. They looked like two miserable bookends.

A light went on in Ted's eyes. "Charlie?", he realized he was onto something here and he sat up straight on his stool for the first time in an hour. "Did something happen while I was away? Do you _like_ someone, Charlie? I mean, more than you normally _like_ them? Gina? Or Tina? Or wait...what was she called...Angela?" Ted was intrigued, he never thought he'd see the day that the never-ending parade of women through Charlie's house finally ceased and he actually got hung up on someone in particular.

Charlie looked uncharacteristically shy.

"I'm right, aren't I? Is it Jen? Has she left her husband?" Ted guessed. His wife had been the only woman he had ever seen Charlie act serious over.

Charlie frowned 'no'.

Ted scoured his memory for likely candidates. "Um, I know! It's that Cristina woman! The one with the missing earring and the...the pool!", Ted's mind flashed back to how he had walked in on Charlie and Cristina in the swimming pool. He wouldn't forget her in a hurry and he could understand why Charlie wouldn't either.

Charlie rolled his eyes, sick of hearing Cristina's name after the events of the previous night. "No, it's not Cristina."

"But there is someone?" Ted reached for the second bottle of wine, eager to hear more.

"Kind of. But it's a long story." admitted Charlie.

"Like the car?", remembered Ted.

"Like the car." confirmed Charlie. "Actually the two are part of the same story."

"So what happened to the car?" Ted asked him, pouring two more glasses.

"Dani", said Charlie simply, amazed at having said it out loud, and took a slug of wine. "Hey, this one tastes of strawberries...and chocolate...and smoke!", he stared at the magnificent plum-colored liquid in the glass. He could really get into wine, he thought.

"Reese crashed your car?" Ted looked perplexed.

"No, _I_ crashed the car." explained Charlie. "Over Dani. To get her back. She's the one...that I, uh, _like_."

Ted's eyes narrowed in incomprehension. Then grew as wide as saucers as the penny dropped. "Dani? As in Dani Reese? As in Detective. Dani. Reese? _Your partner_?!"

Charlie said nothing but signalled that Ted was correct with his eyes.

Ted's mouth flapped open and shut a number of times. Words refused to come. They both took a long drink before they were ready to continue the conversation.

"Well. This is...um..._unexpected_. Are you sure?" Ted wondered if Charlie had gone crazy. He had seen how determined Charlie had been to find his partner when she had gone missing and that was understandable, but this new dimension to the situation was somewhat surprising. He knew they were close but not _that_ close. "Does she know?"

"No. Yeah. Kind of. She sort of knows but she doesn't know how much. And she kind of pretends not to know, like it's not really happening but when I pretend that it's not really happening too, she kind of gets mad and then she acts like she knows that I know that she knows...and..." It came pouring out of Charlie in a torrent of confusion, his face animated as he tried to explain.

Ted wasn't really following Charlie, not for the first time in his life.

"So you've told her? What did she say?", frowned Ted.

"No, I haven't told her. She'd freak, I think."

"But she knows?", Ted recapped.

"She knows." Nodded Charlie.

"I don't know what to tell you. If it were me, I'd tell her. If she knows already, then I don't see...hell, what do I know? I'm no Don Juan, as I've just found out." Ted exhaled, reeling at his friend's capacity to complicate his life. After prison, all Ted wanted to do was live a quiet, simple life. Charlie had given him a job and a roof over his head and made it possible for him to live quietly and comfortably in a way he couldn't have hoped for. But Charlie had marched straight back into the LAPD, the very environment that led to him serving time in the first place. Now he was confessing his love for his partner, the fiery, contrary woman who intimidated the hell out of Ted every time they met. He wondered why Charlie didn't pick one of the numerous, bubbly, smiley women he'd seen him with in the past few months alone. _Dani Reese_. Way to go to make life difficult.

"So if she knows, what does she think about it? Does she feel the same?", Ted asked once he had paused to think.

"I don't know. Sometimes I think I know but then I wonder if I know anything at all, whether there _is_ anything _to_ know. And of course, she's still with Tidwell.", Charlie mused.

He was really on a roll, thought Ted. "Tidwell? She's with him - as in _with_ him?"

"Oh yeah. For a few months now. But she says they're on a break.", Charlie shrugged. He'd taken his vow of silence seriously regarding Reese and Tidwell and he had never even told Ted.

Ted's eyebrows nearly hit the roof. How long had he been away? Not that long, really, and yet all this had been going on right under his nose even before he left. "So, you don't just have feelings for the woman who is your partner, she is also the boss' girl?! Charlie, you know I love you but really? _Really?! _How long has all this been going on?"

"For a long time, I guess. But then Roman held her hostage and I killed him to get her back and well, ever since _that_, it's kind of been out there. Since I've been suspended she's been around here a lot and it's harder to ignore. It's kind of there, _all_ the time. An elephant in the room, as they say. Actually, I'd kind of like an elephant..." Charlie trailed off, thinking about the practicalities of owning such a beast.

That was enough. Ted accidentally knocked the wine glass he had just drained on its side and it cracked on impact with the table. His brain was about to explode. Charlie got up calmly to go get another glass from the cabinet, stumbling slightly as he went and noting the effects of nearly an entire bottle of wine in his limbs. He poured Ted a fresh glass.

Ted stared at his friend in disbelief. "You killed Roman?", he asked, very slowly and quietly.

"Yeah. It was probably gonna be me or him, and anyway, I owed him for what he did to Dani. Nobody hurts my friends, you know that." Charlie said in a matter-of-fact fashion that concerned Ted. Ted had seen what Charlie was capable of on the inside; the fact that he was still capable of it on the outside was worrying.

"You killed him. Wasn't he like Russian mafia or something? Jesus, Charlie, when you sent me that message to say you got Reese back safe and sound I had no idea...I would have come home..." Ted was astounded.

"He was an insect." Charlie grimaced.

"And you're a cop. And now you're suspended?"

"Yeah, while they investigate my _irregular conduct_. And Roman's murder, now that they found his body. I could lose my job. But I don't care just as long as Dani's safe."

Ted now had his head in both hands. It got worse and worse. He reached for the last bottle and fumbled with it until he miraculously managed to remove the cork.

"Charlie. Could you go back inside for this?", Ted asked, blood draining from his face.

"I have a good lawyer." Charlie said confidently, taking a gulp from the new bottle, now unable to tell what fruits he tasted but sure that he liked whatever it was.

"Not Connie?", Ted questioned, dreading the answer. That would be one complication too far and Ted couldn't take any more chaos right now.

"No, a new guy called Marquez. He should get me off. But if I go down again, I'm gonna need you to take care of things. And take care of Dani." Charlie was now deadly serious, obviously not as confident as he claimed.

"Of course - anything Charlie.", assured Ted. They looked at each other for a few seconds in silence, a whole host of memories from their shared past flooded by. Their loyalty to one another was never in question, even though Charlie had just confessed to killing a man. Ted's eyes were now so droopy he looked like a bloodhound.

"I told you it was a long story." Charlie said.

"You weren't wrong." agreed Ted, aware that he didn't even have any of the details yet. His head hurt and yet he didn't consider laying off the wine. Wine was the only thing that made sense right now.


	17. Chapter 17

Dani stood on Crews' driveway in the pool of light cast from his house staring at the new car. She figured it belonged to Crews and that he had decided to go car shopping without her after all. It was beautiful and she was impressed that he had paid attention to her comments from a few nights ago. She had been trying to turn him off of the type of car he had chosen in the past, the machines typical of posters on the bedroom walls of teenage boys, all spoilers, chassis that grazed the floor and crazy angles, and onto something more refined and adult instead. This car fit the bill. It was classy but still sporty and it looked like it could certainly move. She found that it was locked and the windows were blacked-out but one of them was open a crack so she peered inside to see a cream-colored leather interior and wooden, probably walnut, dash. She almost swooned. This was much more like it. She just wished he could be trusted to take care of this one.

Dani stood there for longer than she needed to. She guessed that she could still turn around and go home. She had thought long and hard about coming around tonight but in the end she just couldn't help it. She had cooled off about Cristina a little, and while it still smarted, ultimately the scent of competition had only made her want Crews more. She was done waiting and she knew by now that he wouldn't make the first move. It felt important that she came around tonight and tried to clarify things before she returned to work in the morning. She wanted more than to clarify things; she was wearing her favourite underwear. If she found out he had company tonight, Crews wouldn't be the only one facing a murder charge.

She hadn't yet spoken to Tidwell, even though she had not calmed down in that regard. She was still furious with him but would wait until the morning to tell him so, which she thought was very measured of her. As far as she was concerned, there was now no way back for her and the Captain and the fact that he was being so devious meant that she was no longer particularly concerned about sparing his feelings either.

After she had childishly lied to Crews in order to spite him because of the thing with Cristina and said that she had plans to take her mother to brunch today, she had realized that it wasn't such a bad idea after all. Her mom had enjoyed the chance to get out of the house into a part of town she never visited and to be cooked for for a change, rather than being the one always doing the entertaining. Her mom had resumed the topic of inviting _the Charlie_ over for dinner, her mother's intuition telling her that there was material to be explored in that direction. Dani had claimed not to have seen her partner as he was on vacation, but vaguely promised to ask him when she next saw him. It was clear that she was not going to be allowed to let it drop now that her mom's curiosity had been awoken and her antennae were twitching.

The subject of her dad had arisen, her mother claiming that she had never felt better now that he had gone, her carving out an existence of quite the independent woman at this late stage in her life. Dani wished that her mother had found the strength to kick him out years ago. Her mother only wished that she still had access to his pension, since money was tight. Their house was paid for, she had savings that she had squirrelled away over the years unbeknownst to Jack, and Dani helped her out also but she was far from comfortable. She was talking about finding a part time job so that she could truly stand on her own two feet. Dani was proud of her mom but knew that if her father really had died at the hands of Roman, his pension would secure her mom's future more than adequately. It was the least the son of a bitch could do for her and Dani vowed to chase it up.

/

Inside the house, Charlie and Ted were still drinking but had taken to playing cards as well as bemoaning their respective romantic predicaments. Ted didn't want to talk about Roman anymore because it scared the hell out of him. He tried instead to teach Charlie the rules of a nameless card game he had been shown in a bar in Spain. By playing the game, Ted was evoking the smell of tobacco, the taste of olives and the tinkling laugh of his beloved on some terrace in some quaint square outside a church. He sighed. Charlie was scraping their combined stake of potato chips, M&Ms and loose change from the middle of the table, somehow having beaten Ted at his own game despite not fully understanding how it worked. Neither of them could see straight and they were fresh from declaring their love for one another, while the third bottle of wine sat on the table with only a couple of glasses remaining inside.

Charlie sat up, unsteady on his stool, thinking he had heard something under the sound of Ted belching. He sprang up, realizing that it was a knock at the door and that it was probably Reese. He got half way to the door, turned and made an exaggerated shushing gesture to Ted, meaning that if it was her, then Ted was to keep his mouth shut about everything Charlie had told him today. Ted understood without further explanation.

"It's dark.", said Charlie having swept the door open and been greeted by both Dani and the night sky. He didn't understand where the day had gone.

"Of course it's dark, it's nearly eight thirty." Dani said, frowning. She noticed that Crews was wobbling a little in the doorway. He also had a purplish smudge on his mouth. _That had better not be lipstick_, she thought.

"Can I talk to you about this?", she said smiling and gesturing behind her to the car.

"Yes! The car!", cried Charlie, having almost forgotten about it. He stepped out into the evening, delighted to see it, as if for the first time.

"It's fantastic.", said Dani.

"Isn't it?", Charlie agreed. "I figured that since we couldn't go car shopping, car shopping should...should come to us. I have it on 72-hour loan. Try-before-you-buy. Do you like it? Can we keep it?"

Dani noticed him running his words together and slurring slightly. She wondered where all this '_us_' and '_we_' business was coming from.

"Crews. Have you been drinking?", she asked.

"A little. It's kind of a party. Ted's homecoming." Charlie weaved, the fresh air making him feel more giddy.

"Ted's home?", she asked. He nodded profoundly. So he did have company. Not only that but he was also incapacitated through alcohol. She couldn't launch herself at him while he was drunk. _Could she_? Dani sighed to herself, maybe she should just accept that this wasn't ever meant to happen.

"Want to go for a ride?", Charlie asked waggling his eyebrows.

"No way. You're in no fit state." Dani laughed at him.

Charlie looked disappointed. "But you do like it, huh?"

"Sure I do. How could I not?", she assured him.

"Good. Now come inside and say hi to Ted.", he grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her into the house. She let him hold her wrist for longer than necessary.

"Hi Dani, come take a seat, we're playing cards.", Ted greeted her.

"Welcome home, Ted.", said Dani as she surveyed the scene. Empty bottles, wine glasses, one of which was broken, large red stains and a pile of potato chips and coins littered the table. Ted had already eaten most of the M&M's. Ted appeared to be even more drunk than Crews. He had purple lips also. "Which game are you playing?", she asked as Ted dealt her some cards.

"Uh, it has no name.", said Ted.

"The Spanish game.", called Charlie from across the kitchen. He came and poured Ted the final glass of wine, removed the bottles from Dani's sight and wiped the table clean of wine stains. He went to the refrigerator, poured two glasses of sparkling water, added a wedge of lime to each and set one glass down in front of Dani. She had noticed him removing any trace of alcohol from her immediate vicinity without reference and she thanked him silently for his thoughtfulness.

They played a couple of hands of the game with no name while they taught Dani the rules. Charlie took furtive glances in her direction when she was distracted, trying to ascertain whether she had thawed towards him overnight. The weather seemed fair today and he was glad. He looked at two of his favourite people sat around his table, Dani laughing at Ted's drunken attempts to shuffle the deck effectively, and he felt warm inside, not just from the wine. _This feels like family_, he thought.

Dani won the first hand that she played in her own right, nearly bankrupting both Ted and Charlie who had become reckless with their stakes.

"How did you do that?!", asked Charlie. "Are you cheating?"

Dani looked at him in mock disbelief. "You're playing cards with a guy who served hard time for fraud and you're insinuating that _I'm_ crooked?", she shot back.

"Hey, Ted would never cheat me.", Charlie corrected her.

Ted shook his head solemnly. "I love this man.", he vowed. Dani rolled her eyes.

"Now you two play nicely, I have to pee.", Charlie rose and went to the bathroom, knocking into the sofa on the way. He wanted to go splash some water on his face too in a bid to sober up a little now that Reese was here.

"How was your trip?", asked Dani staring at Ted from behind her cards.

"Confusing.", said Ted. "I love it there but I was chasing after a woman who is indecisive at best. So I came home."

"You came home? How come you didn't stay and fight for her?", Dani raised an eyebrow.

Ted felt like he was being scolded and got defensive. "Because, as you know, the fairer sex like to make up their own minds. I haven't given up but I can't make her love me. She knows where to find me when she decides.", he said sadly.

Dani thought about Crews and whether this was the wisdom that underpinned his behaviour too.

"She'd be crazy not to come get you, Ted.", Dani replied.

Ted remarked to himself that this was perhaps the only nice thing that Dani had ever said to him. He smiled bashfully, especially glad to hear this from a woman. "I hear you and your partner have been in some trouble since I left?"

"Roman?", Dani asked.

"Yeah." Ted nodded, looking concerned. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Back to work tomorrow. I'm more worried about what comes next. For Crews." Dani bit her lip unconsciously.

"He told me what he did. To Roman", he said.

Dani inhaled deeply and he saw a wave of guilt that he recognized creep across her face. He understood that it was not guilt over Roman's fate but guilt at what Charlie had been moved to do for her.

"Being able to rely on Charlie's protection is a blessing and a curse, Dani. You know he'll do everything he can to look after you but you also worry about how far he'll go to achieve it. I should know; he's taken numerous beatings and even a shank in the guts for me over the years. After a while you start to feel a little..." Ted searched for the right word.

"Unworthy? Undeserving? Responsible for the jams he gets himself into?.", suggested Dani.

"Yes, all of those.", Ted agreed. "And you feel like you want to repay him somehow. But he doesn't expect you to; the way he sees it he's repaying you for just being in his life. I guess that's how much you start to value your real friends when so many other loved-ones have deserted you."

Dani had never heard Ted say so much. Far from the shy, goofy guy who just hesitated and stammered a lot she was surprised to actually find him quite wise and eloquent, even when incredibly drunk. She felt that Ted had articulated her feelings perfectly but that somewhere hidden in there was a warning that she shouldn't take her relationship, whatever it was, with Crews lightly. She wondered what Crews had been saying to Ted about her.

Charlie sauntered back down the stairs, his hair around his face slightly wet where he had dunked his head under the faucet. He still felt drunk, he wasn't used to drinking so much. He smacked his leg on the sofa again. Ted saw him coming and switched topics, resumed dealing the cards. "So...you're back on the job tomorrow? Looking forward to it?", he asked Dani brightly.

"Yeah, kind of. I'll be limited to desk duties at first though, I guess.", she replied.

"Hey Reese, I wonder who they'll partner you with?", wondered Charlie.

"I don't need a partner for filing.", Dani hoped. New partners were a drag; it had taken her long enough to break Crews in, she didn't want to have to start over with someone new.

"I bet it's Seever.", guessed Charlie. "You'll meet her properly tomorrow. I think you girls will get on great.", he said smirking wickedly, knowing that they patently would not.

Dani narrowed her eyes at Crews, not knowing what he was getting at. "C'mon Crews, it's your turn.", she prompted him to end his joke at her expense.

They continued to play cards until Dani grew tired of winning so easily, it was like taking candy from babies. If only either of them had any real money on them, she could clean them out.

Dani's new image of Ted as the haggard sage in the corner was fast slipping as he fell into a maudlin stupor. He started speaking at length about a walk he and Olivia had taken along the river in Seville. Dani felt like he was about three minutes from tears and she certainly didn't want to be around to have to mop them up. She caught Crews' eye and gestured to the door.

"It's getting late. I should go. Boys, it has been an eye-opener. I don't think I'll ever fall off the wagon after tonight, so thank you for that", she said.

Ted rose muttering pleasantries, grabbed the bottle of cognac from the counter and retired to the sofa.

Charlie followed Dani to the door, like a dog stalking a bone.

Dani contemplated another unsuccessful evening in her campaign to seduce Charlie Crews and sighed to herself as she turned to face him in the doorway.

"You'll be okay at work tomorrow?", he checked, swaying and coming to lean against the wall for stability.

"Of course. I know exactly how it'll play out: I'll yell at Tidwell, I'll yell at Patty Klein and then I'll spend the rest of the day buried under a mountain of cold case files. Crews, I've done the whole 'return to work' routine before."

"You know what I mean. Just be careful, let me handle the Roman thing. Don't let people drag you into it any more than you are involved already", Charlie warned.

"You mean to say that there are people out to get us? There I was thinking the LAPD was one, big, happy family.", she replied sarcastically.

"Yeah, well. Please just watch your back.", he said quietly, looking pensive. "They don't love you like I love you, Reese.", he added at the end, looking so entirely sincere that she could barely look back at him.

_Oh god, not now, please don't do it now_, thought Dani, looking past Crews at Ted on the sofa, sitting within earshot of everything. She had waited all week for him to say something truly heartfelt and he chose this moment, when he could hardly see or stand up, with his roommate sat just ten feet away, to do it.

He took a small step towards her, she couldn't tell if he had done it intentionally or he had just teetered forward a little. She put her hand up to him and rested it somewhere between his stomach and his chest to still him.

"I know, Charlie.", she said softly, looking him right in the eye and hoping he would remember this in the morning. He laid his hand over hers.

"Plenty of water and two painkillers before bed.", she uttered and then ducked into the night to her car.

Crews watched her go and felt his knees about to buckle. He practically crawled back into the house and collapsed on the sofa next to Ted.


	18. Chapter 18

Charlie awoke at about 6am feeling like he had been in another prison fight. He had made it to bed after having first woken up next to Ted snoring on the sofa in the early hours of the morning. The last he could remember of the evening was Ted insisting he try the cognac, swirling it in the glass and watching transparent streaks climb up the sides, letting the alcohol fumes the liquid gave off sting his eyes. He had ransacked the kitchen to find painkillers, downed two and left the pack next to Ted on the coffee table before climbing the stairs slowly to his bedroom and collapsing fully clothed on the bed. Light flooded in through the window and hurt his eyes. He groaned. They'd gone far too far.

He remembered the evening. Reese had shown up, in a better mood, he recalled. He wondered what it was like for her to spend time in the company of drunks and hoped that it hadn't bothered her too much. He remembered saying goodnight to her and feeling confused. He had the distinct recollection of telling her he loved her but that it hadn't been a full blown declaration, so he was grateful for that at least. He thought he had gone to kiss her but that she stopped him before he could really try, he remembered her hand on his belly softly pushing him back, or was she holding him up? There had been something intimate about it that he just couldn't recall in the cold light of day. He was sure that she had told him she knew, but that he didn't feel like it was a knock-back. That was it; she had called him Charlie and there had been a warmth in her voice that had comforted him. He thought that was what had happened, he couldn't be sure. Maybe his ego was protecting him and he was remembering it wrong. Perhaps Dani had been offended or angry and he'd truly made a pass at her. He didn't feel bruised, so he knew she hadn't slapped him. He cursed Ted and his broken heart and his wine. Charlie vowed never to drink red wine again. Really he knew that the problem wasn't the wine itself, only the volume, but still, he would give it a wide berth for a while. He wondered how Ted was faring.

Charlie got out of bed, body creaking like an old man. He brushed his teeth long and hard to get rid of the harsh tang from the wine. A shower helped somewhat but he couldn't face shaving. He was going to have to take things slow today. He needed more pain relief.

Downstairs he surveyed the scene. Ted was gone, only a Ted-shaped dent in the sofa remained. He looked at the empty bottles and the potato chips and M&M's on the floor and shook his head. Charlie found some codeine and glugged nearly a litre of orange juice. He rested his hands on the kitchen counter and bowed his head. Never, ever again.

/

Dani woke up fresh and got ready for work, feeling a little trepidation. She selected black jeans and a light gray tank under a crisp white shirt, a darker gray fitted jacket and she had left her hair in loose curls. She clipped her badge and her holster to her belt and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Detective Dani Reese, daughter of the late Jack Reese. She wanted to get the first day back over with, she wanted to face down Tidwell and overcome the tedious obstacle that was Dr Klein's interrogation. She was also determined to pick up the word from the bullpen on the investigation into Crews. God help anyone who was making trouble for her partner.

She wondered how Crews and Ted were feeling this morning. Pretty rough, she imagined. She had never seen Crews drink any more than one bottle of beer in her company, though she guessed that was out of consideration for her problem rather than his own preference. She thought about what he had said last night on his driveway. The part that stuck with her had been the _way_ he had said it and the look in his eyes. Even though he was out of his mind she knew that he meant it. If they had been alone she would have seized the moment and kissed him. She rolled her eyes thinking about how long it would be until an opportunity like that would arise again. Twice this week she had been to his house with the express intention of seducing him and twice she had been thwarted. _What does a girl have to do around here to get laid?_ Since when was that so difficult? That man was impossible, she thought.

Dani drank her customary two shots of coffee, skipped breakfast and got into her car. She steeled herself for the day to come and willed herself patience for all the concerned looks and the patronizing heads lolling to one side asking "So how are you doing?". She was doing fine and she had a fire in her belly to get things done today, the week on sick leave had felt like limbo. She switched on the radio and revved her engine. Stopped at the lights, her thoughts drifted back to her partner; work wasn't going to be the same without him. As the lights turned green, Dani suddenly decided to switch lanes and turn left instead of right, earning her a few sharp blasts on the horn from the cars behind. It was a girl's prerogative to change her mind, she thought. She looked into the rear view mirror for patrol cars, thinking how appropriate picking up a ticket for hazardous driving on her first day back on duty would be. Determined to get where she was going, she put her foot down.

/

Crews was at a loss. Having got up early because his skin was crawling, he now didn't know what to do with his day. Both running and swimming were out. He had a brand new car sat on the driveway bit he didn't feel sober enough to drive it. He set himself to cleaning up the kitchen instead.

He flinched and instinctively went for the gun that wasn't at his belt when the front door flew open. He relaxed when Dani's head appeared in the doorway, she spotted him in the kitchen and marched over.

"Hey, aren't you due at work?", he asked, surprised to see her at a little past 7am on a Monday morning.

"Yeah. How are you feeling?", she raised her eyebrows, referring to the little display she had witnessed last night.

"Pretty terrible.", he screwed his face up. "What are you doing here? Did you forget something here last night?", he cast around trying to spot what she might have left behind.

"Kind of.", she said, stepping up to him.

Charlie didn't have his wits about him and wondered what was going on. Dani reached up and looped her arms around his neck, crossed at the wrists, and pulled him down to her. He still didn't get the idea until the very last moment. She closed her lips around his and waited for him to respond. A few seconds later she felt him part his lips and kiss her back enthusiastically, his hands moving around her lower back and pulling her to him tightly. Dani slipped her fingers into his hair as Charlie twisted his head to one side in order to kiss her more deeply. _Finally_, she thought as she could feel them working up some heat and momentum. She sucked on his lips, pausing a second to glance up at him. He still had his eyes closed, wanting more, claiming her mouth back with his own. She pushed him hard against the counter and crushed her body against his, feeling one of his hands clutch her head through her hair and the other wander down to her ass. Dani became breathless as she rubbed against him, tongue flicking against his and her hands easing up his t-shirt, feeling the bumps and grooves of the muscle tone on his chest. Charlie was clearly sick of stooping to kiss her, and grabbed her by the ass, hoisted her up his body, flipped them around quickly and dropped her on the counter top so that they were now at more level heights. Dani would have objected to being manhandled but she quickly saw the benefits of being able to reach his lips easier. Charlie's heart was racing. He hadn't had any time to think, only to react. He loved that she had initiated this and taken him by surprise. She raked his scalp with her fingernails. He wanted to talk to her but he couldn't bear to stop what his was doing, only managing to sigh her name a couple if times. She was just glad he didn't call her 'Reese'. They were now kissing savagely, pushing and pulling at each other and breathing heavily against each other's skin. Dani felt her nipples turning to glass, a melting sensation between her legs. It was everything she had hoped it would be and it had been worth waiting for. She slid her mouth down his throat and felt him pushing her jacket off her shoulders. When he couldn't get it very far down her arms because she still had them raised around his neck, he took instead to unbuttoning her shirt, pushing her back further and further until she nearly laid on the counter. She pushed his fingers away from her buttons and he switched to tugging her shirt tails from her jeans, his chest heaving, a determined gleam in his eye.

"Charlie, stop.", she exhaled.

"Stop what?", he asked, confused because she was still kissing his neck so heatedly. He moved his lips to just beneath her ear.

"Stop trying to undress me. I need to get to work.", she urged him.

"You can't go to work. Not now. No way. Just one more day's sick leave, nobody will question it.", he said desperately between tiny kisses to her neck. "Please."

"No, I got to go.", she insisted. "I'll come back later.", she promised him, looking into his eyes which seemed to have turned a darker blue through lust.

"At lunch?", Charlie panted. "Can you come back then?", he stopped kissing her and pushed his forehead against hers, still staring at her lips.

Dani laughed a little. "No, not at lunch. What kind of girl do you think I am?"

"The kind of girl who bursts into my house unannounced first thing in the morning and ravishes me.", he grinned.

"I've been trying to ravish you all week, you idiot. I got impatient.", she whispered.

"You have?", asked Charlie, raising his eyebrows.

"And now I've started I intend to finish the job properly. And that will take longer than my lunch hour.", she smirked.

This was music to his ears. Delicious, painful music. He frowned. "Tell me I'm not dreaming this. Tell me I'm not still drunk." He looked serious now.

"You're not, Charlie.", she kissed him softly and he shut his eyes.

When she stopped again far too soon he moaned, "Dani, what are you trying to do to me? You're killing me here. Stay...please...", he begged.

She leant forward and kissed him one last time, biting his lip. "I've waited all week for you; we can make it a few more hours." She pushed him back and scooted off the counter onto her feet. It was the closest to sulking that she had ever seen Charlie.

He grit his teeth and looked at her in begrudging agreement, trailing her to the door, feeling restricted in his jeans. His heartrate had just about returned to normal and his head had started to clear.

Before she could escape he pulled her against him and gave her the kiss of her life, half hoping to change her mind at the last. He made sure she felt his erection against her leg. Dani was tempted never to go back to work again, but he let her go just in time. Her heart thumped but she unravelled her limbs from his, straightened her clothes and stumbled outside.

"Tonight.", she promised him.

"Tonight.", he repeated.

Charlie closed the door after she drove away and dived onto his sofa and put his hands behind his head. He felt bewildered, elated and extremely frustrated all at once. It had happened at last.


	19. Chapter 19

Dani drove to work, in a daze over her partner. She thought about turning the car around and going back to him, calling Tidwell to explain that she needed more time like Charlie had suggested. She had acted impulsively, but she just intended to go in there this morning and get things straight with Crews before going back to work. It had felt like unfinished business and it had been driving her crazy. She had kissed him because she didn't know how else to put it and she hadn't been in the mood for yet another ambiguous conversation. She hadn't really expected things to have escalated so quickly between them. Now her body still hummed with the excitement of being so close to him. He had made it very hard for her to leave. If she had stayed two minutes longer she knew that she wouldn't have made it out of the door.

_Mission_ _accomplished_, she thought, Charlie was no longer in any doubt as to how she felt. She was also pretty sure that he wanted her badly too, he had made that very clear. Dani had been expecting Charlie to be shy or tentative for some reason, so his fervour had both surprised and delighted her. Very promising. Now she just had to make the day fly past as fast as possible so that she could get back to him and pick up where they left off. Right now she didn't know if she could hold out, she had visions of racing back there in her lunch hour like he had begged. _That wouldn't be very cool,_ she told herself.

/

Charlie lay on his sofa, almost having to pinch himself periodically to remind himself that all that really had just happened. Perhaps he had been a bit heavy handed in trying to get her to stay, trying to move too fast. He hoped he hadn't put her off by being too eager but he really hadn't been in control of himself. Charlie resolved to let her dictate the pace this evening. That was if she showed up. Every time he thought about it he felt a pang of lust and nerves in his stomach. He recalled the way her fingers had crawled up inside his t-shirt and he began to feel the stirring in his trousers again. He knew he would have to attend to this before Dani came back if he didn't want to prove a total disappointment. He felt like all it would take right now was another one of her kisses to send him over the edge. He also knew that he didn't want to spend all day with his hand in his pants. Today was going to be torture. He would have to keep himself busy. He willed himself some zen. "Life is suffering; Suffering is caused by desire...", Charlie muttered to himself. He took himself and his desire upstairs; there was no amount of meditation that was going to solve this situation.

/

It took Dani a full thirty minutes to get from the parking lot to her desk. Everyone stopped her to ask how she was, say how great it was to see her. She even got some hugs and kisses; she did not enjoy it although she knew people's intentions were good. _One big happy family._ She missed Crews, her shadow, a step behind her in the elevator and on the office floor, always ready to help her avoid any conversations he knew she wasn't interested in having by interrupting or generally talking nonsense to people. So much of his eccentricity was a defense mechanism, she thought. She recalled his hot mouth on her neck this morning and she felt her stomach flip. _Mind on the job, _she whispered to herself.

"Hi. Seever, Jane Seever.", the woman stood at Charlie's desk and stuck a hand out for Dani to shake. Dani shook and Seever sat down.

"Hi. Dani Reese." She eyed the woman. She didn't like that she was sitting in Crews' chair. Charlie hadn't mentioned that she was so attractive, Dani thought to herself.

"So, I think we're partners for a while.", said Seever. "I have to say, I think you're great...what you went through? That takes steel. I admire you."

Dani smiled weakly. "They partnered us until Crews comes back?"

"Yeah. However long that's going to be.", she answered her. Dani could tell that Seever thought it would be a long while, if Crews was ever allowed back at all.

"Crews told me that you, um, helped him when he was looking for me. You took risks - thanks.", Dani said.

"No problem. We kind of agreed that we wouldn't talk about it, Stark too, so, you know, it doesn't have any repercussions. Career-wise.", Seever looked sheepish.

Crews had told her that Seever was ambitious. "Ah. The five-year plan?", Dani said.

Seever nodded, pleased that Charlie had told Reese all about her.

"Crews told me he'd vote you for Mayor.", Dani smiled.

Seever grinned, pleased again at this compliment.

Dani noted Seever's smile._ She had better not be sweet on him_, Dani thought, the intensity of her possessiveness towards Crews shocking her.

Seever proceeded to tell Dani that she had been busy while she and Crews had been away. All the files that had littered Dani's desk were now organized, ordered and arranged alphabetically in two zones, cold cases and ongoing investigations. Seever explained that Tidwell had briefed her that they'd be confined to the office for the next week at least, so it was a good opportunity to lay the groundwork on cases still bubbling along and maybe to revisit some cold cases, using Seever's fresh perspective to see if they couldn't figure out some leads and eventually make some conversions to 'solved' status.

Dani rolled her eyes. "Cold cases. Great."

"C'mon, it might be fun.", assured Seever. Dani was getting irritated already by this woman's positive attitude. Crews would have noticed a stark contrast in working with the two women. She wondered if he had enjoyed riding with Seever, her insecurity rising in her chest. She had got a sense that they got on fine from her phone calls to Crews while she had been posted at the FBI; enough to risk sounding pathetic enough to ask him if there was still room in the car for her. He had reassured her and she had been so grateful for his straightforward and comforting reply, her chest flooding with warmth. Now she wondered if they would ever work together again.

Seever showed her that she had been through most of the files already, tabbing the pages with information of note that she wanted to discuss with Reese. Reese was a little intimidated by all this efficiency.

"Oh, and before we get started for real, Tidwell wants you to go see him and he also said that you have a 10 o'clock with Dr Klein.", reported Seever.

"What are you, like a P.A-stroke-detective?", asked Dani. She hated being organized.

Seever looked a little hurt, she seemed to have an innate ability to rub people up the wrong way. She had been told that Reese was easier to annoy than most. She decided to switch subject, and she started to ask Dani about her time at the FBI.

Just in time, Tidwell opened his office door. "Detective Reese, welcome back, may I have a word?", he said neutrally.

Dani took a deep breath. Just as she had said to Charlie, she already knew how today would go, first she'd yell at Tidwell, then she'd yell at Dr Klein and then she would bury herself in dusty files. Then she'd leave work and give Charlie a night he would _never_ forget, she smirked.

She got up and gave Seever a 'wish me luck' look, which Seever didn't understand. She closed the door behind her and took Tidwell in. They hadn't seen each other or communicated since the night he had come round to her place weighed down with roses. _He must know that the writing is on the wall_, thought Dani. Tidwell rose and twisted the blinds on his office windows shut. He wanted some privacy. This wasn't going to be a regular return-to-work interview.

"You've met Seever?", he asked her. Dani thought there was something cold about him.

"Yeah. My interim partner, I take it?", she replied.

"Interim, yeah." Tidwell repeated her choice of words, a note of sarcasm in his voice. "So how have you been? You know I'm duty bound to ask you if you're ready to come back to work. But since I've not heard from you since Friday in any case, I guess it's a genuine question." Again with the sarcasm.

"I thought you wanted me to take some time to think things over?", she threw back at him. This was clearly going to get personal quite quickly, she realized.

"And?", he asked coolly.

"And I think we should break up. It's not working, Tidwell." There - she had said it, he wasn't going to wear her down this time.

"Is this because of him?" His face wasn't displaying any kind of emotion.

"Is this because of who?", Dani replied.

"Charlie Crews, you know who. Don't fuck with me.", Tidwell said bitterly.

"This is because things between you and I weren't working.", she said, trying to subdue her temper. "Me and Crews has nothing to do with me and you."

"So you're finally admitting that you're fucking him?", Tidwell spat, half triumphant, half incredulous.

"I've told you before. I have never slept with Crews. Not that it's any of your business.", this was true, technically.

"Oh yeah? So why _did_ you leave your underwear in his bathroom? Cause I've been wondering for days.", Tidwell figured that all was lost and he couldn't help himself, he wasn't going to let Dani think he was an idiot.

"What?!", she almost yelled.

"You heard, Dani. You think I'm stupid?" He looked hurt but he also looked furious.

Dani's mind whirred for a few seconds and then she realized what he was referring to. "_You went through my phone?! _Who the fuck do you think you are?!", she yelled.

"I'm the guy you and your partner have been making a fool out of for weeks...for months probably." He wanted to know how long she had been deceiving him, whether he had been right to have felt happy and secure in their relationship at any point or whether it had all just been a lie.

It suddenly clicked into place for Dani. He must have searched through her phone on Friday night. This was why he had been pleading with her not to finish things one moment and leaving so abruptly the next. This was why he hadn't told her about the development in the Roman situation.

"You sick fuck. That was my phone; that was private. You had no right.", she was so mad she could tear his head off.

"Oh, _I'm_ sick? That's rich coming from you; giving me the run around, going missing, letting me think the worst, all the while you were with _him_? And then denying it?!", he laughed bitterly, shaking his head.

Dani got to her feet. "You know what? Go ahead and think what you like - you deserve to. Putting me under some kind of surveillance? Who the fuck _are you_? Have I ever known you? Call Crews right now - _go on_ - get him on loud speaker. _Ask him yourself. _Ask him if my underwear was left drying in his bathroom because we were up fucking all night last Wednesday, or because he went out jogging on Thursday morning and said I could take a swim in his pool while he was gone? Call him right now. Go on, Tidwell. Listen to his answer, Tidwell, and then think about what an unbelievable fucking jerk you really are." Dani was yelling. The words, luckily, were not audible, but the commotion was, and the office was drawing some amused attention from their colleagues already. Dani knew that she was making the whole pool and underwear incident sound a little more innocent than it really had been but she was determined to seize the moral high ground and teach Tidwell a lesson.

Tidwell was quiet. Dani had got so mad that he believed her. He also wanted to stop her causing a scene in the office. If the bullpen had been ignorant of their affair so far he sure as hell didn't want it coming out now that she was dumping him. "So help me god, Dani, if you're lying I'll make sure Crews never gets his suspension lifted, I will not have that guy in my department.", he threatened.

"You'd do that just because you don't believe me when I tell you that nothing happened?", Dani asked him, eyes wide, wondering for real who this guy actually was.

"I'd do it because I think the guy's a fucking nut, Dani. He's dangerous and you shouldn't be around him. Not as your partner, not as anything else."

Dani sat down again and lowered her voice. "It is no longer your concern who I see and when, Captain. I could go to Crews tonight and fuck his brains out and it's nothing to do with you. Anything we ever had, you just ruined. If you dare let your jealousy impact on how you treat my partner professionally, you'll force me to speak to your superiors about exactly what has been going on down here in Homicide these last few months." She hinted at the truth just to hurt him and threatened him all in one.

Tidwell frowned. He had never disclosed his relationship with Reese in the way he was officially required to. She was his subordinate, she was his junior, she was known to have drug and alcohol issues. She was dumping him and it hurt and now that he had it in for her partner she had him over a barrel.

"This is why you failed to tell me that Roman Nevikov had been found dead? You thought your suspicions about me and Crews were grounds to keep from me this vital information about the guy who held me hostage for over a week and who confessed to the murder of my father? You did that because you were _jealous_?"

"Dani, I was mad. I'd just found out...I _thought_ I'd just found out that you were..." Tidwell tried to excuse himself.

"Sounds like professional and managerial misconduct to me. Not to mention being a shitty boyfriend.", she cut him down. Dani got to her feet and made for the door.

"Dani, wait. C'mon. You can see why I did this, right? Because I love you.", he tried.

"You'll have to excuse me, I have a 10am with Dr Klein. She'll want to know what state I'm in emotionally, whether I'm getting support from my personal relationships, if my boss has welcomed me back. That sort of thing.", she snapped.

"Dani, c'mon. There's no need to be so..."

"Fuck you, Captain."

Dani walked out of his office and slammed his door behind her.

Tidwell sat there stunned.


	20. Chapter 20

Dani sat down and slammed her hands on her desk with such force that Seever looked at her with trepidation.

"Good to have you back, Dani.", a colleague muttered sarcastically as he walked by. Reese was always good value in the office, her temperament made sure that she always entertained the bullpen.

"Is everything okay?", asked Seever tentatively.

"Just Tidwell being a jerk.", Dani replied. Ordinarily she would have been offensive back to anyone who dared pry but the fact that Seever was virtually a stranger meant that Dani felt obliged to be polite. She looked over at Seever. The poor woman seemed desperate to establish a rapport with Dani, she probably knew how close Reese and Crews were and she maybe felt like a spare part, she was just trying to fit in. Dani decided to test this. "What do you know about the investigation into Nevikov and my rescue?", she asked.

Seever looked a little conflicted, calculating the politics of the situation, her loyalties and coming up with her response. "I know that since you were released, Tidwell has had us all working round the clock on it. Nothing much else round here is getting done.", she replied.

"Working on it how?"

"Trying to find Nevikov's crew. Trying to recover the weapons used in his murder. They're taking it very seriously - the LAPD looks after its own. We'll get them, Reese."

"And what weapons would they be?", Dani enquired, ignoring the platitudes about 'justice for Reese'.

"An FMG-9 submachine gun and a Glock 17, I believe I read on the ballistics sheet. So far, they haven't found anyone connected. Or anyone willing to talk, at least. It's odd. His men have all gone to ground." Seever reported.

So Nevikov was shot. Dani didn't know that. Neither did Crews. This was good news, thought Dani. Crews had been unarmed.

"Every resource has been piled at that aspect of the investigation.", said Seever. "Nevikov's gang are like rats on a sinking ship...for now. But with Nevikov gone, it won't be long until someone arises to take his throne. We'll get the entire gang who did this to you, Reese. Meanwhile, there's the matter of your father. I'm sorry, by the way. Our orders have been to focus on Nevikov's organization but I knew I'd be working with you, so I took a look into it..."

Dani caught sight of the clock on her monitor. She was intrigued. "Seever, hold that thought. I'm due with Dr Klein." Seever looked a little like she had been robbed of her moment of glory.

/

Dani wondered what Seever had been about to tell her all the way down to Patty's office. She would get this over with quickly, she thought, and she would try not to yell, having conveniently already got that out of her system with Tidwell.

"Dani, come in, take a seat. Good to see you. How are you?", smiled Patty, all expansive arm gestures and loose, upturned, open palms; the body English of one trying to be inviting, unthreatening, approachable.

Dani sat down, quietly. "I'm good, Dr Klein. Feels good to be back.", she said.

Dr Klein proceeded to ask her how she had spent the previous week. Dani explained that she had been spending time with her mother and with friends, not mentioning Crews, and addressing some chores, visiting the gym. Sound, healthy activities of a person who was in no way traumatized or under stress. Patty sounded pleased.

She asked about her feelings towards her captor now that a week had passed. Dani told her she had found out that Roman had been killed and that she felt nothing, no pain, no remorse, no joy. He was just another perp. Dr Klein asked if she was angry that Nevikov would now not face justice for what he had done to her. Dani replied that in a way he had, the circles he moved in meant that he had paid with his life. How did she feel about her father? Dani replied that since she didn't have a good relationship with him, her main feeling in that regard was of concern for her mother, who was still ignorant of the reports of his murder. Dani had now shown concern for others instead of self pity or self absorption. She was ticking Dr Klein's return to work boxes and they both knew it.

Patty changed tactics. Was Dani experiencing any anger management issues? Was she more aggressive than normal, whilst driving, sexually, or in everyday situations, in the queue at the grocery store, for example? Dani laughed 'no', considering that the way she had marched into Crews' house this morning and thrown him up against the kitchen cabinets could indeed be classed as aggressive. Had she used, or felt the urge to use drugs or alcohol in the past week? No. Did Dani think it was fair that she was in the process of returning to work while Crews, her rescuer, was still suspended? Dani replied that no, she didn't think it was fair, but that she knew the wheels of justice turned slowly, even at the LAPD, and she was confident that Crews would be exonerated of any wrongdoing and would join her back at work just as soon as was possible. Patty asked if Dani felt as if she needed to repay Crews. Dani replied that she would find a way to show him her gratitude, remembering the way her name had come shuddering from his lips this morning while she sucked on his neck and he had tried to catch his breath from the shock of her entire assault on him. Would it affect the balance of power in their relationship? Dani thought about domination and being dominated in a bedroom context and quickly had to steer her thoughts from the gutter. She replied that they were partners, that anything he had done for her, she would be prepared to do for him. Patty wanted to know how Dani was going to prove that. Dani retorted that she and Crews trusted one another, there was no need to prove anything. Dr Klein asked how Dani would feel if Crews lost his job over this. Dani answered that this wouldn't happen, since he had done nothing wrong.

Patty narrowed her eyes for a second at Dani and then finally said "Okay Detective Reese, I think we're done here. I'll sign your papers and you can hand them back to Captain Tidwell." She smiled. "You know my door is always open to you, Dani, any time. You don't need to be referred by your manager to come here."

Dani got out of there before her air of conscientious cooperativeness slipped. She took her paperwork upstairs and slipped it into Tidwell's pigeonhole, not wanting another confrontation with him so soon.

/

She returned to her desk, noticing that Tidwell's door was still closed, his blinds still drawn. He would be chewing on her harsh words, she thought. _Good_.

10.42am. The day was passing slowly like she thought it would. She thought about calling Crews but decided against it, she had only just managed to calm herself down after this morning's liaison, she didn't want to stir herself up again and leave herself unable to concentrate for the rest of the day. She wondered what he was doing right now, whether a quick trip to his place at lunchtime was feasible and whether it would satisfy or simply frustrate her more.

Tidwell had threatened Crews earlier on. She wondered if he alone had the power to fire him. She figured not, given Crews' history with the LAPD and how getting his job back with a promotion to Detective rank had been part of his settlement. If Tidwell couldn't get rid of him completely, she guessed he would be able to drag his heels over taking him back, make Crews jump through all kinds of hoops to reclaim his badge. She hadn't been joking when she had promised she would report Tidwell for harrassment if he tried anything like it. Charlie had always protected her and she would always protect him.

Seever was dragging a manicured nail down the page of a file. Dani figured she must have been searching for a key word or something, but then noticed that her eyes were scanning back and forth. She appeared to be reading at a terrific rate - that was right - Dani now remembered Crews telling her about Seever's speed reading, her eidetic memory and her olympian prowess. Dani groaned internally; why did they always have to partner her with the freaks?

"So. You were saying, Seever? About my dad?", Dani said across the desks.

Seever dropped the file. "So, yes. With the claim from Nevikov about your father...", she looked at Dani to check she was really comfortable talking about this and saw no flicker of emotion. "I took a look into it and spoke to some people I know at local morgues. I figured it was worth checking to see if they had taken in anyone that could be your father." She had planned this conversation in her head but now that she was saying it out loud to Dani she felt it might all be too soon.

"As good a place to start as any.", Dani said dispassionately. "But hasn't this already been done?" This was all kind of elementary stuff but she didn't want to offend Seever since she was obviously trying to be helpful.

"That's exactly what I thought. But I checked and, no, it hasn't. Our orders were to focus on Nevikov, drag as many of his known associates and low-lifes in here for questioning to find out what happened with you and how Nevikov wound up dead. I thought it was weird, kind of half an investigation.", Seever explained.

Dani shot a look at Tidwell's door. "Yeah. Odd.", she agreed. "So did you turn up anything interesting?"

Seever hesitated to continue, not quite able to believe how calm Dani was over all this. It was like it was just another case, someone else's murder, someone else's father. "So, um, yeah...I managed to draw up a list from the morgue registers on their intake for the last month and beyond, all the John Does within your father's age range and the basic details on the listed cause of deaths. All it would take is a call to each morgue and we could visit them to see this list.", she finished, passing Dani a list of 27 John Does highlighted in yellow. The list went on into previous weeks and months but Dani agreed that checking out the most recent admissions first would be a good place to start.

Dani scanned the list. Most of them looked to be vagrants and rough sleepers who had died through drugs, alcohol or assaults. She doubted that her father would have seen fit to wind up that way before going crawling back to her mom, but if he had been mixed up with Nevikov and trying to keep a low profile then she guessed anything was possible.

"And you're certain that nobody has already checked this?", she asked Seever.

"Nobody has. I checked with the morgues, none of them had received enquiries related to Jack Reese, none have even received his mugshot." Seever replied.

Dani went quiet. Efforts had clearly been concentrated elsewhere. She stared at Tidwell's door. She wondered if his preoccupation with Crews' investigation had anything to do with the way that resources were being handled on this case. She had a horrible feeling that her fight with the Captain this morning would only serve to make Crews' life more difficult, Tidwell would now search even harder to find evidence of Charlie's misconduct so that he had clear grounds for firing Charlie and could not be accused of being personally motivated to end his career. If the evidence he uncovered pointed to murder, then they all knew which way this was headed.

"I'm sorry. Have I upset you speaking about your father like this?", asked Seever tentatively.

"No. Of course not. This is good work, Seever. Thanks for taking the time when nobody else has."

Seever looked pleased. "So do you think we should take this to Tidwell, make a case for arranging to see these John Does with the morgue guys?"

"Tidwell? Oh, no. No need. How well do you know these 'morgue guys'? Well enough to call in a favor?", Dani questioned.

"Well enough, I guess.", Seever responded, sounding unsure. "But you know, we could ask someone else to go down. You, well...you're a little close to this case, not to mention you're on desk duty. Shouldn't we hand this over to somebody else?"

"And take someone else off Tidwell's Nevikov investigation? Let someone else take the credit for your hard work? No, Seever, we shouldn't", Dani fixed her with determined eyes.

Seever felt uncomfortable. She noticed that both Crews and Reese had a habit of pushing her into gray areas. "Shouldn't we at least get sign-off from the Captain first?", she tried, weakly. She was regretting having brought this up, all she had intended was to help Reese out, show her she was on her side. She never expected Reese to pick it up personally and run with it.

"Nope. Tidwell will be thrilled that his Detectives are working proactively.", she said forcefully. "C'mon, get your jacket Seever. I'll buy you an early lunch and you can call your morgue friends on the way." Dani stood up and beckoned that Seever did the same before Tidwell could emerge from his office and catch Dani sneaking out.


	21. Chapter 21

Charlie had wrestled with his desire all morning and lost the battle on several occasions. He was no match for it.

He was starting to drive himself crazy, so resolved to occupy himself with something other than the thought of Dani's visit this evening. Her kisses and the resultant surge of testosterone had blown his hangover away and now he buzzed with nervous energy and anticipation. Did she know what she was doing to him? Did this mean that they were now together? Had she grasped just how much he loved her? It was almost too painful to contemplate now that they were so close. He just hoped she was serious, there was no going back to hiding things for him now. He wondered where Tidwell fit into all this. He hoped Dani was setting him straight right now. Charlie wasn't interested in half measures, love triangles, or messing with another guy's girl.

He grabbed the keys to his new car and sank into the driver's street. It felt good. He had picked this car because he knew that it was one that Dani liked. He had to admit she had good taste. He opened up the engine once he reached a clear stretch of road, reminding himself that he was absolutely not allowed to develop any kind of attachment to this machine. There was no tape player installed; he was clearly going to have to invest in a CD of the zen teachings that he used to keep himself on the right path. Otherwise between the car and Dani he could quickly find himself hopelessly corrupted. The car purred as he accelerated, the sunlight glinting off its sleek lines and beautiful blue paintwork. He felt powerless against it, much as he had this morning in Dani's arms. There was no way he was returning this car to the showroom after his trial period; there was no way he was going to go back to purely being Dani's partner.

He spent the early part of the afternoon in the mall. He wandered around a department store, looking and feeling slightly lost. He was about to walk right out again when a sales assistant took him under her wing and interrogated him gently as to what he was there for. Charlie didn't really know, but he confided in the sales girl that he had a hot date. At that moment Jeanette the saleswoman knew she had him; there was nobody easier to manipulate into multiple purchases than a lovesick guy. Charlie trailed around after her as she tried to push wine, chocolates, flowers, expensive underwear, perfume, jewellery and even the finest linen bed sheets 'for if things go _really_ well' on him. The more she continued on about the trappings of love and courtship, the more certain that Charlie grew that this was the wrong approach. Dani wasn't like other women he had dated, and in any case he wasn't in the practise of showering women with gifts so they would sleep with him. This thing with Dani wasn't like his dalliances with the badge bunnies. He hadn't been this nervous since he first got together with Jen all those years ago. His palms were sweating. He thanked Jeanette, agreed to take the sheets only so as not to completely waste her time, and left her perplexed at the cash register. On the way back to the car he dropped by a delicatessen and bought some fresh coffee beans. He figured that if Dani was serious he wouldn't need more than that.


	22. Chapter 22

There were five bodies on Seever's list from the morgue at the edge of town. They headed there first, calling ahead to the larger county morgue, so that they had time to prepare the larger share of the bodies, some eleven corpses, for when Reese and Seever dropped by later that afternoon.

The morgue technician was like all morgue staff that Dani had encountered through the years, eccentric and totally unaffected by what he dealt with everyday. Pulling bodies from the refrigerators like they were slabs of meat at a supermarket. It was as though life and death had become so mundane to them that it ceased to have any meaning at all.

Reese was so businesslike that Seever almost forgot that they were out trying to find Reese's father. She stepped into the room where the bodies were set out behind Reese and got herself a cold stare, suddenly realizing that Dani was potentially here to identify her own dad and that she might appreciate her privacy.

"Oh, uh, I'll wait outside.", she blurted.

Dani was glad she hadn't had to say anything blunt.

Dani gave the five bodies a quick initial scan. None of them looked likely candidates at first glance. One was obese, another too short, two were black and the last one was too old. Still, she looked at each one closely in turn. They deserved to have someone look at them. They might not be her father but they were all probably someone's dad, or brother, or husband. She was struck again by the sadness that a life could amount to this, meat in a chiller with no name, left unclaimed like lost luggage. She thought about how likely she had been to wind up the same way while she had been using. This scenario was only ever one bad night out away, some coke cut with something caustic, a tryst with one wrong guy too many. She imagined her mom in her place, searching through corpses to locate her daughter. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was time to go, the morgue technicians had done them a favor and she didn't want to keep them waiting for no reason.

Dani stepped out of the room. "Nothing.", she said to Seever. She figured that this was a long shot at best, they would probably never find him. Roman could have been making the whole thing up in any case, just trying to hurt Dani when he had made his claim. There had been something gruesome in his eye though that implied he was telling the truth, she recalled.

Seever thanked Brian, the morgue guy. She had connections all over town, Dani noted, she was serious about building her empire alright. Seever seemed to understand that today's morgue technicians could be tomorrow's County Coroner, she would be a friend to people on their way up and by the time they had got there, they would return the favor.

Seever and Reese entered the next morgue across town, altogether a larger and busier facility. Seever had noticed that Reese was quiet and pensive in the car as she drove over here and she thought that maybe the poignancy of the situation was now hitting home.

"Hey Ranjit.", called Seever to the technician in his late twenties who pulled the white earbuds from his ears when he saw her coming.

"Hi Jane, we've laid them out next door for you.", he beamed at her.

_First name terms with everyone, _this woman's powers of networking were impressive, thought Dani.

"Thanks for doing this at such short notice, Ranjit. We appreciate it. My partner Reese here is going to take a look next door. I'll stay here and you can tell me all about your wedding.", Seever smiled.

Dani was quietly grateful to Seever for doing the talking. She smiled at Ranjit and he held the door open for Dani to enter into the dimly but institutionally lit anteroom to the industrial chiller they had here. She saw eleven bodies, set out in a row of six and another of five. Viewing corpses in a morgue was different to seeing them at a murder scene. The brutality, the blood and the mess was gone, the faces were neutral, the poses were uniform. There was also a distinct lack of violence, of horror. You could really tell very little from these corpses unless the injuries that landed them here were visible. They had no clothes, so it was hard to distinguish one dead guy in his sixties from another, there being little to denote their circumstances, their jobs, their wealth. A judge who had died of a coronary could lay alongside a bum who had overdosed; you really had to read their notes to discern any difference between the bodies now so close in death and yet poles apart in life. The main marker was time, while the judge would be claimed within the first 72 hours of his arrival, nobody might ever come for the bum. The longer the body had been consigned to the chiller under the moniker 'John Doe', the lower down the social strata that person tended to belong. Dani just found it sad.

She conducted a first pass on the row of six. Nothing. This could go on for a while she thought. She moved down to the row of five. She froze. Number seven of the eleven. Her father. His face was as passive as the rest except there was a bullet hole in his right temple. She was glad that the exit wound was at the back of his head. His hair looked greasy and bedraggled, his moustache more unkempt than normal. Dani couldn't believe it. She had been one of those people who told others that the dead just looked peaceful no matter who they were. Somehow Jack Reese still looked mean. Even with his ever-critical, steely blue eyes closed. There he was, the big man, just laying there. This was how it all ended. She read his notes. John Doe, aged 55 - 65, 5 feet 11 inches, 170 lbs, no identification, no distinguishing marks, one shot to cranium, right side, one point-blank bullet to the intestines, contusions to the wrists and ankles. She only vaguely recognized the detectives' names on the paperwork, Detectives Miroslav and Grant. They obviously hadn't recognized the mighty Jack Reese. She wondered if he was a cold case sitting on someone's desk.

A wave of nausea enveloped Dani and she hung on to the edge of the gurney. This was not the softly lit visitors' room in which family members usually identified their dead. This was cold, stark, clinical and smelled medicinal. How was she going to tell her mother? His notes read that he had been brought in three weeks ago, at which point they estimated that he had already been dead two days. Why were her hands shaking?; she didn't even like the guy. The thought that he had been dead all this time and she and her mother had no idea struck her as unreal. He had been found at the docks, Port of Los Angeles, by an employee doing his rounds inspecting the containers in the early hours. Dani guessed he had been dumped there; if the murder had taken place there then he would have been discovered on an earlier round if he had been dead two days. Whoever dumped him had not even bothered to kick him into the water. She wondered if Roman had been the one to kill him, just as he had claimed. The bullets from the two injuries had come from the same weapon. Roman had said that her father had cried as he killed him. In which case, the shot to the stomach must have come first, the shot to the head would have finished him off. He would have been in some agony. Dani felt the nausea rising.

She raised her eyes to her father's face once more. Maybe for the last time; she would have to dissuade her mother from having an open casket. She felt a sea of emotions but she couldn't distinguish them from each other before another one surged to the fore. She noted down the reference number from the tag on the bodybag. And then she turned her back on the man who she felt had turned away from her at every opportunity throughout her life. Except for that one birthday when he taught her to ride her bike.

She rejoined Seever and Ranjit. Seever looked concerned, she knew that Dani had been gone too long.

"We have our man.", Dani announced, pushing the paper with the reference number on it towards Ranjit.

Ranjit grinned and yelled out back "Yo! Ernesto! We have a claim!".

Seever winced, she knew that the morgue was overrun and Ranjit was just pleased to have freed up one more precious space in his chiller. Dani feigned a smile, she understood that Ranjit wasn't to know that he was being insensitive.

"Uh, okay, Ranjit. We'll do the necessary and let you know whether the family would like to see him in the visitors' room or whether there'll just be a pickup.", Seever said hurriedly, hoping to prevent him from saying anything even less tactful.

Reese looked pale. Seever asked her if she was okay once they got to the parking lot.

"I'm fine. Here - you drive.", Dani tossed Seever the keys. This was a marker of distress, thought Seever. There had been no question of who had been driving on the way out today.

"Want me to take you home?", asked Seever, not knowing what to do for the best, wondering if this had all been a terrible idea.

Dani insisted that they go straight back to the office because she wanted to talk to Tidwell. She was silent all the way there but Seever became aware of her glowering in the passenger seat.

/

As Dani stalked across the office floor, Seever looked into Tidwell's office, which now had its blinds open. "Looks like Tidwell's busy, he has Commanding Officer Boyczeck with him. Want me to grab you a coffee while we wait?", Seever offered, really not knowing how to comfort Reese. She wished Crews was there, he would know what to do.

"Please.", said Dani. The second that Seever had left her side to go to the coffee machine she launched herself forward and practically flew into Tidwell's office, ignoring the fact that he was having a meeting.

"Detective Reese!", Tidwell almost shouted, hoping to god that Dani hadn't lost it and was about to go for round two in front of his Commanding Officer, exposing their affair and leaving him in a very vulnerable position.

Dani stood with her feet planted a hip's width apart, as if she was making sure she had a solid foundation from which to launch her attack. Commander Boyczech rose to his feet.

"I want to know what you have been doing to find my father!", yelled Reese, fury in her eyes.

"Reese, you can't just barge in here. We were having a meeting. Commander Boyczeck and I...", protested Tidwell.

Boyczeck signalled to Tidwell that it was okay. "Detective Reese. I knew your father well, he was one of the best. Let me speak for us all when I say that we are all concerned about the claims made by Nevikov and no stone will be left unturned in our search for his whereabouts."

Tidwell looked embarrassed. "Reese, this is part of the ongoing investigation."

"Really? Then you can tell me what leads you have. Which detectives do you have working on it?", Dani clearly hadn't calmed down.

"We're on it, Reese. But it's not appropriate that you're involved in the case, for obvious reasons.", he raised his eyebrows to suggest that they way she had just stormed his office was illustrative of this.

"How _appropriate_ is it that I've just been down to the County morgue and found him for myself?!", Dani roared.

Boyczeck looked at Tidwell, who gulped.

"You found him? He's dead?", asked Officer Boyczeck.

"Three weeks dead, in fact. Want to explain why nobody on the investigation had even called around, circulated his photo, exercised some fucking rookie policework in the search for him?", Dani was incandescent. "It's been a week Tidwell. Checking the morgues is step one, I don't need to tell you that. I've been back on the job since 8am today. How come I've made more progress than this entire department on my first day back?"

Boyczeck looked at the floor and then up at Tidwell, suddenly as interested as Reese was to hear the answer.

"This is a complicated investigation...", began Tidwell, obviously at a loss as to how to explain this.

"I'll tell you why; because you're all so busy trying to find an angle on my partner in all of this, you can't even conduct a legitimate operation here. It's a witch hunt. The whole reason that you're looking for an excuse to throw the book at Crews is because he embarrassed your entire department by taking action against Nevikov while you all had your hands up your asses back here. Now look - it's happening again. It reeks, Tidwell, and you should be ashamed of yourself."

Boyczeck was staring at Tidwell like he knew Dani had a point. When Reese had burst in they had indeed been discussing the matter of Charlie Crews and how best to deal with him since his lawyer was now crawling all over them.

Tidwell was speechless. He couldn't believe that Dani had run in here and was doing this in front of his boss.

Boyczeck took matters into his own hands, he was clearly pissed at Tidwell. "Detective, you are quite right. You shouldn't have had to do this yourself. This part of the investigation is clearly lacking. Captain Tidwell will address this immediately. I'm sorry for your loss and the entire LAPD will join you in mourning a dedicated police officer and a fine man. Please, take a seat. You've clearly been through sonething you shouldn't have had to deal with personally. Can I get you something to drink?"

"No thank you, Commander. I'll be leaving now. I need to break the news to my mother.", Dani replied.

"Would you like an office to drive you home? Perhaps to be there when you talk to her?", Boyczeck offered. He saw her attempting to contain her temper and he remarked to himself that Reese junior was a lot like Reese senior.

"Not necessary, Commander, but thank you.", Dani said, finally calmer now that she could see that this would be taken seriously from now on. She walked out without giving Tidwell another glance.

Seever was outside the office cringing, she couldn't believe what she was witnessing and she felt partly responsible. Reese and Crews were certainly a volatile pairing, she noted, and somehow she had wound up involved with both of them.


	23. Chapter 23

Dani felt numb. She switched off the ignition and sat in her car in the driveway. It was only just 4pm. The second her mother saw her she would know that something was wrong.

Just as she thought. Her mother kissed her and said "You don't come over for weeks and now you're here all the time ." Dani stared at her, wanting to prolong the time she had left in ignorance for as long as possible. She wanted to preserve how she looked before she had to break her heart, she knew that deep down she loved her father no matter how pleased she said she was that he was gone. Her mom had been dusting the photos in the frames in the living room. Her wedding photos, Dani as a baby, a day by the sea when Dani was six, Jack in his beat uniform, Dani's cousins, Dani in her prom dress, Dani on her first day on the job.

"Wait. You're not at work?", she said sharply, sensing that something had happened.

Dani didn't know how to phrase it, so she just said it. So many times as a police officer she had delivered bad news to people, now that it was to her own mom she was doing it all wrong. She hadn't even made sure she was sitting down first and now she grabbed her arm as she stumbled slightly, chair scraping on the kitchen floor as Dani pulled it out and backed her mother into it.

"When?", she wanted to know, her voice hoarse.

Dani told her the truth. She told her that Jack had been shot, there was no sugar coating it. She said that maybe he had been killed by an old adversary he had made during his time with the force, someone looking for revenge. Dani didn't want her to know anything about Nevikov, or her own kidnap, or the allegations that her dad had been anything but a straight cop.

"Thirty five years on the force and he gets himself shot now he has retired? Now he's just an old man?", her mother sat wringing her hands and shaking her head. For nearly thirty five years she had worried every time he left the house for a shift that he would never come home. They had attended the occasional funeral of some of Jack's colleagues killed in service and she always feared that he would be next. He assured her that nobody would dare shoot him; he was Jack Reese. She had almost come to believe in his invincibilty as much as he did.

Dani rose to make some coffee but was interrupted by the sudden sound of her mom sobbing quietly behind her. She drew up her chair and held her tight, her heart in pieces for her mom but unable to shed a tear for the brute himself.

"I just thought he'd gone away...with that blonde woman...the Marie. I didn't think he was gone forever. I thought he'd come home when he got bored.", the words came spilling out between waves of tears.

Dani rubbed her mom's back to soothe her. This was the first she had heard about any Marie. So her father was an adulterer too? _Pretty much an all-round bastard_, thought Dani. Her mother had obviously seen fit to keep the issue of '_the Marie' _from Dani, even though there was no need, her opinion of him couldn't have sunk much lower. She would have shot him herself had she known. Perhaps that had been what her mother had been afraid of.

Her mom had been so stoic when he left her, she just got on with life, taking a little more for herself each day and it had been heartening to see. Dani had convinced herself that her mother was relieved that he had gone, that she had maybe even wished for it deep down. Now Dani saw that she clearly always thought that he would be coming back; she had been putting a brave face on it and maintaining her pride, especially since another woman seemed to have been involved. Every time she felt her mom's hand tremble under hers a flood of sorrow rushed through Dani.

Dani got her to move to the sofa in the living room and finished making the coffee. She sat with her for hours. There were more tears, which Dani couldn't bear, but then they stoped abruptly and her mother started talking about practicalities, the funeral, flowers, whether there would be the traditional LAPD wake for his police friends. Dani didn't know whether this was her mom's natural bent for organization or whether she just needed to busy herself because she couldn't deal with the news. Her mom rose and called her sister. More tears. Her mom and her aunt seemed to feed off each other's hysteria. Dani just sat there, not feeling much except a wish that her mother's grief would cease, the wailing and chatter of the phone call going on in the room somehow in the background, muffled and indistinct, like Dani was enclosed in her own bubble.

/

Charlie sat on his sofa, stewing. It was gone seven. He had spent the rest of the afternoon swimming, tidying his house, fixing up his bed with the new sheets he had bought. When that was done he took to pacing, from the kitchen to the front door and back again. Over and over. Just like he used to do in his cell in Pelican Bay, except now his route was thankfully longer and his setting now somewhat more luxurious.

He would have expected to have heard from Dani by now. She should have finished work already. Perhaps she had dropped by her place first, he thought. He felt like a coiled spring. He checked his phone. Nothing. He resisted the urge to call her, not wanting to seem too desperate to see her. But he _was_ desperate. He was nearly tearing his hair out. Perhaps something had come up at work, an urgent case or something. Perhaps she was taking the opportunity to speak privately with Tidwell.

She wouldn't stand him up, _would she_? Surely not, not after this morning. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Perhaps he had come on too strong. Perhaps she had seen in his eyes just how much all this meant to him, maybe she had got scared.

He checked his watch. There was time yet. He was just being impatient.

/

Mrs. Reese had tuckered herself out. Dani said she would stay the night just to be close to her and she put her mother to bed just like her mother had done for her all those years.

Once she had settled, Dani walked around the familiar house in the darkness, just a lamp in the living room to see by. All of her family's things. The photos. The easy chair her father used to sit in to watch ball games and drink, the empty bottles of beer lining up by the side of the chair until her mom scooped them up in silent disapproval. It was funny to think he was never coming back and she wondered now whether she too had always believed deep down that he would return.

She wandered into the room her dad called his 'office' and flicked on the light. He did sometimes work in here, there were papers all about, but Dani knew that he mostly used it as a refuge from the women in his life. He'd go crazy if Dani or her mom wandered in unannounced. There were photos on the wall of Jack and his friends on the force. One of a German Shepard dog he used on the job and had been particularly fond of. None of Dani. A baseball and a mitt lay on the desk, gathering dust. Right next to it stood a tumbler and an untouched bottle of scotch.

Dani sat down at the desk. She placed the tumbler in front of her and stared at it. She knew that just one sip would put an end to the numbness she felt. Feeling something, anything, was far preferable to the persistence of this cold, inert pebble in her stomach. She reached for the bottle, unscrewed the cap and at that moment all was lost.

Dani took a big gulp from the tumbler. At this point she panicked, decided that she could still spit it out before it hit her throat and she felt the burn, but then her eyes shifted back to the baseball mitt and she swallowed down hard in something like defiance. In defiance of her dad or of herself? She didn't know. She figured she would have time enough later to analyze this latest fuck up. Right now she didn't care. She wanted to hurt herself and elevate herself from this entire situation. Right now every pleasure receptor in her brain was on overdrive, the amber liquid slipping down into the pit of her stomach, partially dissolving the numb polished stone.

She remembered her dad sitting right here in this chair, twisting himself to yell at her seventeen-year-old self as she prepared to bluster out of the house and off into the night. His hair rough silver wire, his face all snarled in whiskey-soaked fury, his eyelids puffed and pink.

She filled the tumbler again and rose to face the photo of her dad in uniform on the wall. "Slàinte, dad.", she said, raising her glass to him. Down the hatch, a pleasant swimming sensation around her eyeballs. The rest of the bottle and the oblivion it contained beckoned.

_To hell with the twelve steps, once a drinker always a drinker, it's in my genes. _


	24. Chapter 24

Mrs Reese had fallen into a deep sleep almost as soon as her head had hit the pillow, the news Dani had delivered had been a shock and trying to process it had left her exhausted. Nevertheless, just a couple of hours later she awoke with a jolt, remembering that Dani was there and then remembering why. Her head hurt and figuring that her daughter might still be up, she resolved to go get some painkillers and look in on Dani. She was glad she was home at a time like this.

There was a light still on in the living room and she wandered through in her bathrobe. Dani was asleep on the sofa. It wasn't until she got closer that her mom saw the tumbler on the floor and realized that Dani was clutching a bottle of scotch. She began muttering panic in Farsi, grabbing the bottle to examine its contents. Over half of the bottle was gone and she knew where it had come from, she had wandered into that office several times herself since Jack had been gone, for what reason she wasn't sure. She told herself she had plans to turn it into a snug of her own but the persistent belief that Jack would return had stopped her.

"My baby! _My baby!_", her mother repeated frantically as she tried to bring her daughter around. Dani stirred but didn't open her eyes. Her mother knew about Dani's problems with alcohol, yet another curse brought on the family by her husband, she believed. Even though she was full of grief for Jack, she blamed him bitterly for Dani's current state. She was ignorant to the extent of the addiction, or the shocking lows and the terrible situations Dani had wound up in because of it, but she knew she had been in treatment and that her career had suffered as a result. She knew that her daughter was never to touch another drop again but she didn't know what would happen if she did. Could she _die_? Dani had wisely kept the drug use out of it, that might have been a step too far even for her mom.

At least assured that Dani was not unconscious, she sat down in the tiny gap left on the sofa by her daughter's side and wept anew, not knowing what to do to help her child. She had seemed so much better these past couple of years. Her mother had experience of living with a heavy drinker, if not an alcoholic, and it wasn't the life she wanted for her daughter. She clasped her hand and watched her breathing through her tears, not taking her eyes off the rise and fall of Dan's chest. She would stay up all night if she had to, she wouldn't rest until Dani woke up.

Just then there was a phone ringing, the sound coming from Dani's jacket. She waited a few moments to see if this would revive her and then reached into her pocket to retrieve it. She flipped it open and saw 'Crews' flashing on the caller ID. She knew that this was 'the Charlie'. Dani's mom wasn't good with cellphones but she hit a button at random and brought it to her ear.

"Reese?", said Charlie, expectantly. He had decided that he had waited long enough, it being way past ten, and he had started to worry for real.

"No. It's her mother. This is Charlie?", she replied.

"Is everything okay Mrs Reese?", Charlie knew something was off, his heart now in his mouth, instantly imagining Dani in trouble again with Roman's gang.

Dani's mom didn't know what to say. She sniffed back some tears. "You're her friend, aren't you?", she checked, wanting confirmation that divulging any information wasn't going to land her in trouble with her daughter. She had seen that temper fly first hand on many occasions and now that alcohol was involved she knew the stakes were high.

"Yes Mrs Reese, we're friends. In fact I was expecting to see her tonight but she hasn't shown. Mrs Reese, you can talk to me, is Dani okay?", Charlie could hear her crying and screwed his free hand up into a fist. If anything had happened to her at work today he would never forgive himself.

Dani's mom was just relieved to be speaking to someone. She told Charlie what had happened and that Dani had been drinking, waiting to see how he reacted to this last point, not knowing if she would have spoken to her partner about her problem.

His voice told her that he knew. He checked that she didn't think Dani needed an ambulance. "Mrs Reese, could I come over?", he asked.

/

Charlie arrived at the address Dani's mom had given him inside twenty minutes.

Mrs Reese regarded the tall red head with suspicion, wrapping her bathrobe tightly around her but his manners, his warm smile and the offer of his hand to shake seemed to allay her fears. She took him through to the living room and he rushed the last couple of steps, falling to his knees and putting his ear to Dani's face hear her breathing and grabbing her wrist to feel her pulse.

"She'll be okay", said Charlie to Mrs Reese, who breathed a sigh of relief. "How much did she drink?"

Dani's mom held up the large, now half empty, bottle of scotch. "She took it from Jack's office. Is it my fault?", she asked, biting her lip.

Charlie rose and looked down at Mrs Reese's eyes. "No, it's not your fault, Mrs Reese. Dani has an illness and every now and again, if she's not careful or if something terrible happens like today, it can flare up. She'll be okay, she just needs to sleep it off. She might need some help when she wakes up though.", he touched her arm gently to reassure her.

Dani's mom nodded solemnly, gazing at her daughter.

"We should make sure she lays on her side though, in case she vomits.", he added.

"She can sleep in her old room. She'll be more comfortable.", her mother said. "Can you carry her?"

Charlie lifted up his partner very carefully and followed her mom to Dani's room which had long since been redecorated into a neutral guest room. He imagined her growing up in there. She murmured something indistinct but didn't open her eyes. He set her down gently on her side on the bed and crouched down beside her to look at her face. Her mother wandered out to get a pitcher of water and a blanket. When she returned to see Charlie on his knees again, smoothing strands of Dani's hair away from her face and his hand lingering a little too long over her cheek she knew for sure that her intuition had been right that something was going on between her daughter and the tall, kindly stranger.

Dani's mom pulled off her daughter's boots and draped the woollen blanket over her with love. She looked at Charlie knowingly. "Come on young man, I'll get you a drink. Are you hungry?", she said.

Charlie sat with Mrs Reese at her kitchen table, eating leftover mujadara and vegetables and drinking chai. He had a good appetite, which she attributed to him being so tall, and he took interest in the food she gave him, and this in combination with the care he had shown Dani meant that he was winning her over fast. Charlie liked her too, he could see the family resemblance in her quick wits and that Mrs Reese was tiny, dark and he was sure she could be pretty fierce too when she needed to be. He asked her about her cooking, something that she was clearly an expert in, and she held forth for fifteen minutes on the ingredients she used and the love it took to prepare them well, how they used to eat as a family back in Iran.

"I asked Dani to invite you to dinner. Did she tell you?", she said.

"No, she didn't, but I'd love to come sometime Mrs Reese.", beamed Charlie.

"No more Mrs Reese. It's Fariba for you." She reached out and patted his hand affectionately.

Charlie smiled at her but then it faded slowly. "Did Dani tell you how Mr Reese died?", he asked.

"Shot.", she said simply. "He was a cop, like you. Did you know him?", said Fariba.

"Kind of.", he replied vaguely. "I'm very sorry."

"He was a stupid, proud, drunken fool. He carried Dani through that door from the hospital when she was born and from that day on he has only ever brought trouble and pain into this house.", Fariba sniffed back more tears.

"But you love him all the same?", said Charlie sympathetically.

Fariba nodded and smiled at him with her watery eyes. "Dani and Jack didn't get on so well, he wasn't a good father."

"Yeah, I know.", Charlie said, as if he understood the way things were.

"Dani told you this?", she looked surprised, then resigned. "He never showed much love."

"But I bet you had love enough for two parents. Dani thinks the world of you.", Charlie said. He could feel that Mrs Reese felt guilty about the whole situation.

"You're a good boy, Charlie.", she said. "She talks to you? You and Dani are close?"

It had been a long time since anyone had called Charlie a boy but he liked it, it was kind of maternal coming from her. He thought about how much he still missed his own mom. "Dani isn't much of a talker, Fariba, but I know her well. I trust her with my life and I think she trusts me too."

"I can understand why.", she smiled brightly at him, wondering why she hadn't been introduced to him before. "Do you really think Dani will be okay?"

"I'm sure. Do you have coffee in the house? She'll want it tomorrow. Most mornings at work she won't even speak to me until she's had her coffee.", Charlie joked.

"You _do_ know her well! I have coffee.", she replied laughing but dreading Dani's mood tomorrow. Jack would always be impossible the morning after.

"Mrs Reese...I mean, Fariba?", Charlie asked. "Do you think I could stay here the night? I'd like to be here when Dani wakes up. Just to see that she's okay. Could I sleep on your sofa maybe?", he didn't know how this would go down.

"I'll find you blankets.", she nodded.

Charlie rose and washed his dishes in the sink. His new pal Fariba joined him there and poured out the remainder of the scotch, worried in case it proved too much temptation once again.

/

Fariba left Charlie on the sofa with a pile of pillows and blankets. She patted him on the arm softly and tottered off to bed herself.

Charlie crept into Dani's room to check on her and found her still sleeping soundly. He climbed onto the bed beside her and got under the blanket. He just wanted to feel her warmth again. He put his face to her hair and inhaled. He could smell the whiskey on her. Charlie understood why she had wound up drinking tonight but he dearly wished that she had come to him instead. He would have taken care of her. He noted sadly that what he offered couldn't compete with the lure and the comfort she had found in the bottle. Maybe he wasn't enough. He looped his arm around her waist and hugged her gently. The relief of holding her close finally made his eyelids droop and before long he had slipped into sleep as if it were contagious.

/

Dani opened her eyes slowly in the half light. There was thunder rolling in her skull and sand in her throat. She knew this feeling well. The furniture in the room swam into focus but she was surprised not to find herself in a motel but in her childhood bedroom in her family home. She associated the crushing hangover so strongly with cheap bedspreads and stained walls, the regret and remorse competing viciously with the repeated flowers on the hideous motel wallpaper. She was confused. She hadn't lost herself in a bar and given it up to some guy who was just as drunk and broken as her. She was at home. She recalled being in her dad's office, drinking his scotch and staring at his photo in fury. She was at home and yet there was someone laying beside her in the bed.

Somehow she knew before she even rolled over and looked that it was Crews asleep next to her. She looked at his serene face. How had he got there? Had she called him and told him to come over? A booty call? She cringed. She had no memory of seeing him. She only remembered the scotch. She noted that they were both fully clothed. God, she had really screwed up this time. She wondered just how much she would have to apologize for when he woke up. She cursed under her breath. Doing this to strangers had never been much of a problem; doing it to people she actually cared about constituted a new low. In spite of this, she was so, so glad that Charlie was there. She pressed her face into the crook of his neck and he shifted to accommodate her without waking up. She wrapped her arm around him and squeezed tight, praying that she hadn't disgraced herself too much the night before. She knew that she was a horrible, wilful, unpredictable drunk. When she was drinking the people around her would wind up getting hurt, even though the only person she had a will to destroy was herself. She couldn't believe she had done this again. And that she had done it over him; she hated her father now more than ever.

She hoped she hadn't been spiteful to Charlie. She knew she was capable. He was still there and that was something, she guessed. She hoped he hadn't been disgusted by her. Dani was overwhelmed by shame and self hatred and tried to suppress the hot tears that leaked from her eyes regardless.

Charlie came round to Dani crying silently on his shoulder, soaking his shirt, for the second time in just over a week. Just like in the orange grove. He knew that she would rather he didn't see her cry, knowing just how proud she was, so he said nothing and just put his arms around her and pulled her tighter against him. His gesture just made her cry harder and she found that she could no longer contain it, giant sobs now escaping her, making her shoulders and chest jump with every wave. She cried for herself, for what a weak, feeble drunk she was but she also cried for her father, finally. He stroked her hair to console her but it seemed like every kindness he tried to show her only served to upset her more.

"It's okay, Dani", he whispered. "You're okay." He kissed her head.

"I don't know why I did it.", her voice cracked, the lump in her throat so big she could hardly speak.

"He was your dad, Dani. That stuff affects you whether you like it or not.", he replied softly.

"I'm so sorry, Charlie.", she uttered, trying to find his eyes in the shadows to show him she meant it.

"You don't need to say sorry to me. Hey, drink some water.", said Charlie, getting up to pour her a glass from the pitcher her mom had left.

Dani gulped the water down, then a second glass. When she had finished, Charlie lay back down, inviting her to resume her position with her head on his shoulder, pulling the blanket up around her. She still didn't know what had happened the night before and while Charlie appeared not to be appalled or offended, she wished so badly that she could wipe the slate clean. She looked up at him and touched the side of his face. She pressed a long, slow, gentle kiss to his lips that seemed to go on for minutes before they broke. They looked at each other in silence for a few moments and then she did it again. It started out quite chaste until she felt her heart quicken and something took over. She trailed her fingertips down his cheek, over his chin, across his adam's apple down his throat, to toy with the wet collar of his shirt. She popped the first button open, then slowly moved to the second, the third and then the fourth before he stopped her from going any further.

"No, Dani. Go back to sleep.", Charlie pulled away.

"C'mon. Don't you want to?", she purred against his neck.

"You know I do. But not like this.", he said quite sternly.

Dani could see why he would refuse. She couldn't be at her most attractive right now, a drunk with tear-streaked cheeks, tremoring hands and whiskey breath. But still the alcohol sped through her veins and she persisted, kissing his neck softly and worming her fingers into his shirt. She felt his pulse speed up and was convinced that she would get her way until she heard him growl.

"Please don't, Dani. I don't want it to be this way. Just close your eyes and we'll talk tomorrow.", he complained.

The pain in his voice made her stop what she was doing but she couldn't help but feel hurt. She suddenly wished it wasn't Crews in the bed but some guy who wouldn't think twice about holding her down and using her like the worthless excuse for a person she felt she was. She was begging for it and he wouldn't do it. _Well, fuck him and his honorable fucking behavior._

They spent the next few hours sleeping fitfully, waking to find the others' hands roaming, always over their clothes but with such passion in their fingers that it was hard to differentiate. He was just as bad as she was, but Charlie was adamant that they shouldn't go any further tonight. She was drunk, her dad had just died and her mother was only next door. However, he was so turned on that he told himself that if Dani dragged her hand past his crotch and suggestively lingered over the buckle on his belt one more time he wasn't going to be able to stop himself. If Charlie wasn't going to do it she was going to make damn sure he suffered. She was almost entirely on top of him now and they moved together slowly in a delicious frustration, half asleep but more than half aroused. Their legs entwined, each grinding down on the other's thighs. She pressed into him and dragged her hands all over his hard body. She brushed his open shirt aside and sucked a hot circle of seduction on his collar bone and he let her do it, hands on her ass, pulling her across his hips. It was like they had magnets in their pants. She just wanted to get his clothes off him. As the sun came up, they both fell into sleep once more, heart rates finally steady and wandering hands motionless at last.


	25. Chapter 25

Charlie lay awake with Dani asleep beside him, wondering if she was going to be okay.

She had to be, he had promised her mom as much.

Dani opened her eyes again and groaned. She didn't look well. He offered her more water. She refused.

He eyed her kind of nervously, not knowing if she remembered anything about the night before, or the nearly-but-not-quiteness of them sharing a bed again. She looked back at him, wanting to die, hating herself for allowing him to see her in such a state.

"Charlie. I'm so sorry.", she started again, unaware she had already tried to apologize once. "I feel like I've ruined everything. Now you know what I'm like."

"I already knew what you were like. And you haven't ruined anything.", he replied. "Why didn't you call me last night, Dani?"

"But I did call you. That's how come you're here, right? I don't think I even want to know what I said to you."

"You didn't call me, _I_ _called_ _you_. Your mom picked up. You were already passed out. I asked to come over. You know, you really scared her.", he explained. "You scared me too, Dani."

Dani closed her eyes, ashamed. She blinked back tears. All she needed was to cry again in front of him for her humiliation to be complete. "I don't know how to say sorry. I don't know how to make it right."

"Yeah you do. Just never do it again.", he replied plainly and wrapped his arms around her. "Easy for me to say, I know."

She started to explain the events of the day before, not to excuse herself but in the hope he might understand, just a little bit. About her fight with Tidwell and his threats towards Charlie. "He's out to get you over Roman, Charlie." How Roman had been shot, according to Seever, so the injuries that Charlie had inflicted on him where not all that would be listed in the autopsy. How Tidwell had been through her phone and seen a certain text message Charlie had sent her and how she believed that this was driving him to search for dirt on him. How she had threatened Tidwell right back. She told him how she and Seever had visited the morgues and had found her dad almost immediately. "He was just laying there cold, all shot up, just waiting to be found.", she said. He watched the memory of it haunting her eyes. She told him about the way he had flown at Tidwell in front of Commander Boyczech and then stormed out. As she told him all of this, she felt his body tense underneath hers. He was mad and he was silent and he didn't speak again for what seemed like an age.

Charlie took a moment to compose himself.

"What was going through your mind when you picked up that bottle?", he eventually asked her softly, brushing her cheek with the back of his fingers, not really expecting her to answer him.

"I don't know. Lots of things, I guess. I was mad at everyone, at Tidwell, at my dad for being such a bastard and the fact I'd never get to tell him so, at Roman for killing him...at myself for even caring. It was just a way to make it all stop for a moment. I know, it's stupid." There was an element of dark spite towards herself that she had felt too, but she just didn't have the words to explain that part. She looked at him cautiously, watching him for an expression that would say he thought she was crazy or disgusting.

Charlie was surprised that she was being this candid. It hadn't been the night with her that he had spent the entire day before imagining, but it was a new intimacy that he welcomed nonetheless. They had enlaced fingers as they talked, just their fingertips grazing gently, and he knew he shouldn't be distracted from the important things she was expressing but he couldn't help but be entranced by her lips as they moved. His whole body ached for her. This was the weirdest kind of pillow talk he had ever known, the content of their conversation was violence, murder, grief and alcoholism but the way they looked at one another, the way she fiddled lightly with the buttons on his shirt and the way he caressed her hip was as if they had just made love.

He could tell that Dani was in pain too, but for different reasons, although she hadn't said anything. "You need to get some more sleep, it'll make you feel better.", he said.

"You need to get out of here before my mom gets up and figures out what you've been doing, or not doing, as the case may be, in bed with her daughter all night.", she replied, wit shining through her hangover. Charlie knew then that she would be okay. She did remember the way they had spent a tortuous night together, he just hoped she appreciated how much restraint he had shown.

"Okay, I'm going.", he smiled. "But I'll be back later. You should stay with your mom today, she needs you here." He meant that, but he also knew that she stood a greater chance of staying sober with Fariba around her.

Dani wondered how the hell Charlie was qualified to know what it was that her mother needed, but figured that they had met last night, and anyway she quickly became distracted by the dread she felt at the thought of facing her mom this morning.

Charlie kissed Dani softly on the lips, both of them fighting the urge to turn his goodbye into something more torrid. "Please call me if you need anything, if you struggle.", he asked shooting her a meaningful look, leaving it at that, not wanting to crowd her where drinking was concerned. He had to show her he trusted her.

"I'll see you later.", she replied. She had no intention of letting him down again, so grateful was she that he hadn't been repulsed by her behavior. She had never felt so loved by a man and they hadn't really ever done more than kiss.

She tugged the blanket up around her chin, cold now that he wasn't there to keep her warm.


	26. Chapter 26

Charlie sat in his car with his hands gripping the wheel tight. He was having visions about marching into Tidwell's office and beating the shit out of him. He knew it would only make things a hundred times worse but he so wanted to do it to get him back for upsetting Dani and for having joined the shadowy league of conspirators against himself. He had thought that Tidwell was a good guy. There was no means to listen to his zen tape in his new car but he managed to calm himself down through a little meditation. He told himself over and over that Pelican Bay rules no longer applied. He took a long gaze at Dani's mom's house, buckled up and drove off.

/

Fariba had heard movement in the house and got up but found Charlie already gone. He had folded up his blankets and left them in a neat pile on the sofa. They almost looked like they hadn't been slept in. In the kitchen he had left her a note, "_Fariba, thanks for having me. I spoke to Dani this morning before I left and she's okay, she's sleeping now. See you soon, Charlie._" She smiled. He was a good boy. Fariba stood wringing her hands by the sink, hoping that what Charlie said was right and that Dani would be okay, that last night had been a blip, a one off.

She remembered Jack being drunk and abusive, eventually falling asleep while still in a rage and waking up the next day pretty much the same way. Sometimes, if he didn't have to haul his ass to work, he would get out of the chair in which he had slept the morning after and be straight out of the door to go and drink some more before she could even try to stop him. She didn't know where he went. Other times, he never came home at all and eventually Fariba figured that this was for the best since he was miles away from her and Dani when he was at his worst. It pained her so much that her daughter had turned out like her father.

She had seen things on tv about alcoholics. About how they would do anything for their next drink. She had emptied the scotch bottle down the sink and there was nothing else in the house since Fariba didn't drink herself. She wondered if Dani was going to wake up and tear the kitchen apart. She recalled having seen a desperate guy drinking mouthwash as a substitute in some film. Fariba rushed to the bathroom, grabbed the mouthwash from the vanity unit and hid it in the laundry basket under a sheet. A week later she would hear a clunk as she loaded the washer, just realizing in time and rescuing the mouthwash before she switched it on and wound up with a minty mess of sheets and melted plastic. Although she had been through something similar with Jack, it was different with Dani because she was her child and she knew that she had been trying to recover from her problem. Fariba didn't know what to do for the best and so just waited nervously for Dani to rise.

Dani wandered through to the kitchen at about 11am. Even her mother, who was naturally biased, would say that she looked like shit. She felt like it too. Dani shot her mom an uncertain look, unsure whether she was going to get yelled at or be cried at instead, not keen on either option.

"Coffee?", said her mom.

At this, a signal that her mom was going to be as accepting as Crews had been, Dani felt herself crumble slightly inside and she trotted over to her mom standing by the sink and hugged her with all her might, whispering that she was sorry over and over. Her mom held her tightly, not able to remember the last time Dani had come to her to be held like this. Dani sniffed on her shoulder, fighting it, but eventually let the tears of remorse escape. Fariba knew that somewhere in the mix were tears of grief for the father she professed to hate and now that Dani had given herself an excuse to cry it might be the one time she allowed herself to let it out. She had been the same as a child, refusing to cry the morning that the beloved mongrel they had taken in had died but truly letting rip in the afternoon when she slipped off a wall and grazed her knee. Back then, just as now, Fariba knew what Dani was really crying over, even if Dani didn't know it herself. She was as proud and stubborn as her father had been, but only Fariba was close enough to both of them to recognize it. Fariba rubbed her daughter's back slowly, encouraging her to cry herself out, just like she had done regularly in exactly the same spot in the kitchen when Dani was a little girl.

Once Dani was done she felt better and she swore to herself that this was the last time she cried over this whole episode. She was going to get herself together, for her mom, for Charlie, and for herself.

They talked honestly that morning, or as honestly as Dani could allow, and her mother expressed her terror that Dani was going to ruin her life through drinking. Dani tried to explain her relationship with alcohol to her mom, succeeding in part, and under pressure and out of guilt at her behaviour, promised to take her along to one of the group meetings, from which she had been absent for a while. Dani hated those meetings, sat around in a church hall on a Tuesday night while people expounded on their feelings and their hopes and fears. _Please_. Painful though it was, she had to acknowledge that it had helped her a little in the past even though she was one of the more reticent participants. Her mom seemed pleased with this agreement and if it stopped her worrying quite so much then it would be worth it.

Fariba watched her daughter's hands trembling, her coffee cup rattling on the table as she set it down. She insisted that Dani ate and dragged her reluctantly into the kitchen again.

The kitchen had always been the site of their landmark mother-daughter chats. As Fariba took up her pan and prepared to crack eggs into it, Dani could feel it coming, the air was pregnant with maternal intrusion.

"So, I met your partner.", her mother said somewhat casually.

"_The Charlie_?", replied Dani. "Was he, um, _weird_?", wondering what her mother would make of him if he had particularly been on form last night.

"Weird? No. He's a good boy, my Charlie.", answered her mom, stirring the contents of the pan.

Dani was astounded. "Wait. Did you just say '_my_ Charlie'?! A second ago he was '_the_ Charlie'. What happened here last night?" Dani knew that this linguistic shift from the definite article to a proprietorial 'my' before his name was a significant marker of affection. '_My_' was strictly reserved for Dani, her cousins and aunts and 'my George'. As in George Clooney.

Fariba smiled at her daughter mocking her. "That was before I met him. He's a good boy. He cares for you."

"Mom, Charlie is older than I am, he's a Detective in the LAPD. I don't think you get to call him a 'boy'.", Dani chided.

"He's a boy to me, as you're still a girl.", Fariba said stubbornly. "And he has pretty eyes." With this she fixed her daughter with a stare as she sat the plate of eggs down in front of her. "Now eat."

Fariba had always been a sucker for blue eyes. It was the first thing that drew her to the young Jack Reese when she got to know him as she helped out in her uncle's shop on Westwood Boulevard while still a young girl. She thought he was so handsome stood there in his beat uniform with his Irish eyes blazing out at her through dark lashes.

Dani picked up her fork slowly, not wanting to eat, and least of all eggs, but she knew her mom well enough to know that it wasn't negotiable. She took small bites and waited for her stomach to heave. "Mom, do you have a crush on Charlie?", she smiled at her.

"No, but you should. He has no wife?", her mom replied pointedly. Another stare.

Dani rolled her eyes. "No, I told you, no wife." She didn't think it was the right time to explain about Jen and Pelican Bay. She wasn't going to discuss her burgeoning relationship with Crews either, she wasn't ready to define it to herself even though it was clearly now happening, much less explain it to her mother.

"Well, he's coming to dinner. _I_ asked him.", she raised an eyebrow.

Dani knew better than to argue. What Fariba wanted, she invariably got, sooner or later. _Wait until she figures out he's rich_, Dani thought. She braced herself for the onslaught of questions about Charlie. She had been through this before as her mother had tried to encourage her to date the backward sons of friends in the past. At least this time she was getting warmer, she guessed. She thought about how he had crept into her bed last night and teased her with the proximity of his body. She would have to claim his ass pretty soon because she couldn't go on like this, she thought, as long as he still wanted her after her little breakdown the night before, that was.

Fariba smiled as Dani ate her eggs obediently.

/

Charlie strode towards Tidwell's office door, every few paces people greeted him, some slapped him on the back. He grinned at Seever on his way past, who half smiled 'hi' and stood up looking conflicted like she felt she should stop him seeing the Captain unannounced. When he reached the door he failed to knock but just bowled on through, closing it quietly behind him.

Tidwell swallowed hard and wondered if he should call for back up. There was something in Crews' body English that he didn't like. He took comfort in the fact that his blinds were open, people would see if the crazy son of a bitch decided to attack him.

Charlie sat down and regarded him coolly. Tidwell stared back at him sitting there, insouciant in his civilian clothes.

"You know, you shouldn't be here while you're on suspension, Crews.", Tidwell started, attempting to assume control.

Charlie stared hard at him. Pelican Bay rules may no longer apply but one thing he learned while he was inside was that if you looked at someone like you believed those rules did apply, you often never needed to resort to actual violence anyway. "I just came by to give you a message. From Reese."

Tidwell paled. He had planned to call Dani today, see how she was doing, try to make things a little better after yesterday's showdown. "How is she?", he said hoarsely, then cleared his throat.

"She's been better, I think it's fair to say.", Charlie replied. "She's taking some time off. Compassionate leave, after what she went through yesterday."

"Yeah...that was...unfortunate. I've spoken to Seever about it, she won't do anything like that again." Tidwell hated that Crews was on the inside. He was far too close to Dani for his liking.

"Looks to me like Seever was the only one doing anything at all. Dani is grateful to her.", said Charlie, accusing him with his eyes.

Tidwell noticed that the other man was now referring to his girlfriend, sorry, his ex girlfriend, by her first name. He grit his teeth. "Yeah well, we're short staffed."

Charlie gave a half smile. He could do 'menacing' real well. Almost as well as he could do 'crazy'. Tidwell had always found the combination unnerving and now that it was directed right at him he found it terrifying. "About that, since you brought it up. When can I expect my suspension to be lifted?", Charlie asked.

"When the investigation is concluded. I'm not at liberty to discuss it with you right now, you should talk to your lawyer. From what I hear, he's a chatty guy." Tidwell puffed out his chest behind his desk.

Charlie leaned forward in his chair. "Do I get to read the report?"

"You will.", the Captain confirmed.

"I'm looking forward to that. Especially the part where you sent me off to get Reese and gave me your cell so that I couldn't be traced through mine."

"Officer Stark was found to have picked up my cell phone by mistake.", Tidwell stated smugly.

"If he gets any heat, Officer Stark will co-operate fully with the investigators and tell the truth. He told me so. He's a good guy, Bobby. I think the investigators will get a picture of a pretty tight knit team, don't you? What with the boss as prepared to bend the rules as I was in order to save his girlfrien-sorry, his junior officer, sorry, I mean Detective Reese. It's heartwarming, really." Charlie sat back in his chair. He gave that innocent, happy-go-lucky smile of his then fixed him with cold eyes.

"That's enough, Crews. You need to get out of here.", the Captain snapped, standing up quickly.

Charlie rose languidly. "I'll be sure to give Reese your love.", he said as a parting shot, just to hurt him.

He exited Tidwell's office, proud not to have lost his cool.

"Hey Crews. What are you doing here?", called Seever, now sitting at his desk he noted. He took Dani's chair and wheeled it over closer to her. They chatted a while until Charlie could see Tidwell agitating behind him that he was still in the office. He finally got to the point and thanked Seever for doing the groundwork unprompted in finding Jack Reese. Seever was visibly pleased to be praised for it when she had got nothing but trouble from Tidwell for her efforts. "_The individual doesn't shine when the team looks bad_.", he had said to her. Charlie told her how grateful Dani and her mother were to her. She almost blushed. Charlie glanced behind him to see Tidwell moving towards his desk to pick up the phone, probably to call for help in removing him from the building. He leaned in and kissed Seever on the cheek in thanks. This time she really did blush.

By the time Charlie and the elevator had reached the parking lot, the bullpen was circulating a rumor that he and Seever were now an item.


	27. Chapter 27

Dani heard a commotion at the kitchen door. It was Crews. She could hear her mother making a fuss about something. Dani was excited to see him again but schooled her features so that her mother wouldn't see it. She wandered coolly through to the kitchen and leaned up against the door jam.

She couldn't see her mom because she was obscured by an enormous bouquet of flowers. She was just a pair of stumpy legs underneath a very tasteful explosion of white lilies, roses in loose buds of orange and peach with an occasional spray of some minute cream flowers on deep green stalks. She shuffled Charlie into the kitchen, enthusing about how beautiful they were and she beckoned him down to kiss his cheek, saying "You smell good Charlie, like lemons and fires."

If Fariba wasn't Dani's mother, she would be jealous.

Fariba put the flowers in the sink and made Charlie sit at the kitchen table. She hadn't managed to get dressed yet with all the worry over Dani and the phone calls to relatives and considering she now had a guest she thought it inproper that she was still wandering around in her bathrobe. She left Dani and Charlie in the kitchen.

"Crews, are you sucking up to my mom?", Dani shot him a knowing smile.

"No. I'm sucking up to you both.", he replied with a broad smile and pulled a small can from his pocket. He had ground half the package of coffee beans that he had bought for the morning after their date that never was and he slipped them onto the table in front of her. She took a sniff and rolled her eyes slightly in pleasure.

"Is it working?", he asked.

"Is what working?", she looked at him blankly, distracted by the scent of the coffee.

"My sucking up?"

"I'd say it is. My mom loves you.", she answered.

"And you?", he tried, bravely.

She looked at him for a second. He had showered, shaved and changed his clothes since she had seen him that morning. Her mom was right, he did smell great - nearly as good as the coffee.

He watched her watching him.

"Me? Oh, I think I'm warming to you.", she grinned, moving in slowly for a kiss. Before she could seal the deal she heard her mom shuffling back towards the kitchen and was forced to withdraw.

Charlie lamented the fact that he just couldn't seem to catch a break these days.

"Coffee?", she asked him, rising and moving out of his reach. He nodded eagerly, he would agree with just about anything she suggested. Fariba joined him and smiled beatifically at him while Dani made them all coffee.

They chatted amiably while they drank, content in each others' company, for a while forgetting that they were in mourning and had a funeral to arrange. Fariba couldn't remember the last time that Dani brought a young man home, especially such a nice one. She didn't care if they were dating or not; they ought to be. Her eyes flitted towards the flowers standing in the sink.

"My vase...on top of the cabinet, I can't reach. Charlie, would you mind?", asked Fariba. This vase hadn't been used since her anniversary two years ago when Jack hadn't been home for nearly three days straight and had brought his wife a cheap bouquet as he ambled home in a stupor to try to minimize his wife's onslaught once he finally got there.

Charlie obliged, the tail of his denim shirt rising over his ass as he reached up to retrieve the vase. Both Reese women took him in silently. Fariba gazed at him appreciatively and shot Dani a pointed look, lifting her eyebrows in a '_check-that-out-I-told-you-so' _fashion. Dani was horrified. Her sixty-something mother was openly ogling her partner and she felt both strangely protective of Charlie's honor and outraged that her mom even had eyes for that sort of thing.

Charlie was oblivious and wondered why Dani was scowling as her mom got up to fuss the flowers into the vase.


	28. Chapter 28

Charlie maintained a respectful distance over the next couple of days. He missed Dani but he knew that she had a lot to deal with, the odd kind of grief-cum-relief that had swept over her when she had found out about her father, the repercussions of her relapse with the whiskey, the need to support her mother through everything and making the arrangements for the funeral was plenty. That was on top of the thing with Roman, which she hadn't mentioned much lately but must still be on her mind. He figured she didn't need him adding to the tumult. She knew where he was and that he would come running if she ever asked. He had waited so long for Dani that he figured another week or so wouldn't hurt him. In theory that was true. In practise he mooned about his house, almost paralyzed by the longing he felt. He hadn't even confided in Ted that the situation with Dani had developed some. He didn't want to jinx it. He was in a bad way.

Dani did have her hands full. She had decided to stay at her mom's place for the foreseeable future, just to make sure she was okay. Her mom's sisters were about to descend and she was working with the LAPD on the funeral; Jack Reese was to be buried with full honors and the force were even making a sizeable financial contribution. Dani thought it was bullshit. That her father was to be treated like a hero in death when she knew that he was shady at best in life made her sick. But she knew that it would make her mother proud and she couldn't bring herself to burst her bubble by speaking her mind. No, Dani would play the dutiful daughter, be strong for her mom and in a few days this would all be over and she could get on with her life. Her life. She was plenty busy but she still had time to think about Crews. It was a pretty big step. But it had already begun, they had merely been interrupted by events; she considered it unfinished business. They had been on the verge of starting something that scared her and yet she still wanted it more than anything. Sometimes she thought she might lose her nerve, that it was a crazy idea, that she should put a stop to it before it got out of hand. Other times, like when he had come over to give her mom flowers, she felt so impatient with desire that she knew it was the only answer.

Commander Boyczech had called her to explain that Jack's friends on the force were holding him a traditional LAPD wake in a bar across town where Jack was known to drink in 'the good old days'. They would be honored if his daughter would join them to raise a glass to the 'fallen soldier'. Calling in person to speak to Dani was the Commander's way of apologizing for the way things had gone down with the discovery of Jack's body at the morgue. Dani told him she would try to drop by, that her mom was still a little fragile and that she would see how things were. She floated the idea with her mother, who felt strongly that Dani should attend on behalf of the family. Dani wasn't keen. All of the old guard would be there. Tidwell would likely be there. All of them singing her father's praises. And it was taking place in a bar. She didn't know if she could stomach it.

Charlie was delighted that she had asked him to accompany her.

"Is this like a date?", he asked enthusiastically, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he sliced a pineapple in his kitchen.

"Going with your partner to her father's wake in a bar full of brass to keep her from either screaming at the hypocrisy of it all or from drinking the place dry? No, I wouldn't call this a date, Crews.", she answered frankly.

"Either way, there's nothing I would rather do tonight.", he said. And he meant it.

"_Really? _Maybe you need to take a look at your social life.", came her retort. She knew that it would be so much more bearable if he was there.

/

They arrived late, drawing up to the parking lot in separate cars but entering the bar together. Tidwell spotted them immediately and grit his teeth; he might have known that Crews would turn up, he had hoped that he could corner Dani this evening and straighten things out. What were they, glued together now?

As Dani walked through the bar a ripple of recognition spread through the room. Some officers raised their glasses to her and others whispered indiscreetly to one another. Charlie followed two paces behind, meeting the eyes of everyone who looked at him, and joined her at the bar where she stood staring at a framed photo of her father. She could smell the liquor in the air and it made her skin itch.

"Drink?", asked Charlie.

"Double vodka, on the rocks.", Dani replied dryly.

Charlie ordered two sparkling waters from the bartender.

Dani looked around at the bar, imagining her father sitting there for hours while her mother sat waiting for him in vain at home. Charlie imagined Jack Reese and friends huddled at a table drinking hard liquor and discussing the Bank of America job, maybe the Seybolt murders, maybe Charlie's own life sentence. He was glad he could be there for Dani but this was also an opportunity to see who had turned out for Jack Reese, who his closest friends and accomplices might have been. No Mickey Raybourn, not that Charlie was surprised, given recent events.

Dani greeted friends and well wishers and tolerated acquaintances and those she did not care for. Many fell into that last category and she bore it well, all without a drink in her hand. Charlie watched her and wondered at the patience she was showing. He had thought they would be in and out of there within fifteen minutes. But they stayed. They didn't talk to each other all that much but Charlie was never more than a meter away from her and she appreciated it. It made her feel stronger.

Both Seever and Stark were there and Charlie chatted warmly to them both. Bobby offered Charlie one of the bottles of whiskey that was doing the rounds but Charlie refused on the pretext that he was driving, even though it was more out of solidarity with Reese. Alcohol was flowing liberally all around the room, the assembled group of police of all ranks growing louder and more raucous. Tales of Jack Reese's SWAT operations, of hilarious bungled stake-outs, of practical jokes at the training academy filled the air. It was a celebration, as these wakes always were, and while Dani liked the atmosphere, she couldn't help feel bitterness as her father was lauded as a policing giant, old school, a legend.

Dani spotted the two men she recognized as Detectives Miroslav and Grant across the room. They had picked up her father's body at the dock. They hadn't known who Jack was then but they certainly did now. She wondered if she should go over to speak to them. Crews asked her what she was staring at and she had the time to explain briefly before she was suddenly cut short by another old retired pal of her dad's asking after her mother and passing on his condolences.

Charlie watched the two men. He knew one of them in particular by reputation alone. Detective Grant was cocky. Charlie had often heard stories of him offering bribes, how he had been reprimanded for roughing up his perps whilst they were cuffed and on their way to the station to be booked in. He had a gambling habit and when Charlie had first rejoined the force, Grant had invited him to join several card games knowing that he was good for a few dollars, he guessed. He didn't like the guy and had given him a wide berth since. Miroslav was the junior partner and was nondescript in most regards, the perfect patsy to Grant's bully. Together though they seemed like the kind of Detective partnership that operated within the law, but only just. Charlie watched them, considering all this, when Grant caught his eye as he took a long pull on his bottle of beer. He looked amused. His mouth didn't smile but his eyes crinkled with mirth and twinkled with what Charlie was sure was malice. Charlie was used to being unpopular, he had won some true friends but there were still officers amongst the force that considered him a con and a nut, while others just resented his settlement and what they saw as his undeserved promotion to Detective. He stared back at Grant and saw him whisper something to Miroslav and move off. Charlie had a bad feeling about this.

His attention snapped back to Dani. He could feel her mood growing darker by the minute without even communicating with her. He watched her staring at the whiskey bottle being passed from hand to hand.

"Want to go?", he stepped forward and asked her, as far as she was concerned out of the blue.

Before she could answer in the affirmative, the murmur of the crowd was silenced by the repeated smack of a bottle against the bar. Eulogies. Several of them. Dani couldn't very well up and leave the room when they were in full flow. Jack Reese was a stand-up guy. Stories of Jack Reese entering an infamous crackhouse without his weapon or back up and bringing in a notorious felon single-handedly. Stories of him during his beat days accompanying an 81-year old woman named Betsy to and from the grocery store every Wednesday. Reliable, tough, brave. Not the Jack Reese Dani knew at all. Not the pig-headed, vicious, semi-criminal, drunkard that she knew so well. She wanted to stand up and give an eulogy of her own. See how they liked that. She knew it was pointless. Dani felt little tears of frustration welling up, teetering on her eyelids. She prayed they wouldn't tumble, she didn't want anyone to think she was crying for her dad, that she bought into the bullshit too.

She needn't have worried. All eyes were angled at Commander Boyczech who was now taking his turn to speak. Charlie came and stood closer to her, by her side. He weaved his fingers into her palm and she closed her hand around them. Nobody could see them amongst the crowd.

"Let's leave, Dani. I want to go.", he whispered so only she could hear.

"I can't, they're still speaking.", she replied.

"We'll say you were upset, that you had to get out of here." He watched her grimace and he knew why. Her stupid pride. "Who cares what they think?".

He was right. She let him lead her out of there and she told herself that it didn't matter what people thought her motives were. _Screw them_. They didn't know Jack and they didn't know her. She blinked back the tears that head threatened to spill.

/

Out in the parking lot they walked in silence towards their vehicles. "Did you hear that? Full of shit, every last one of them.", she said bitterly.

Charlie understood how true that was. "Forget about it Dani. You get to remember your dad any way you like. In a few days this will all be over. You can move on." He wanted to take her mind off things, he knew that if he let her dwell on it she would only end up drinking.

He pulled away from her as they were about to reach their cars and tossed his keys up in the air. She caught them instinctively as they fell towards her. "Test drive?", he suggested, raising his eyebrows.

"My mom will be waiting up.", she replied, feeling like she was in high school again.

"C'mon. Half an hour. It's still early.", he tempted.

Dani looked over at his shiny new car. Her eyes swept over its sleek blue contours and she was as good as in the driver's seat already. Charlie smiled. He had intended for them to buy this car together, to enjoy it with her, and this was the first chance he had got to share it.

Dani revved the engine and listened to it purr and hum. "Oh, my.", she muttered. They left her car in the parking lot. There wasn't much traffic on the streets and Dani hugged the corners, delighting in how it handled, until they got out onto open road. She headed out towards Manhattan Beach, putting her foot down.

"Tell me you're attached to this car.", Dani demanded.

"Nope.", Charlie shook his head.

"Tell me!", she insisted.

"Okay, maybe a little.", he conceded. In truth he loved it but this was the first time it had really brought him happiness.

She grinned and they sped past the lights and the sound of bars and restaurants. He opened the windows slightly so they could smell salt on the air mingled with the scent of fish frying. He fished around behind his seat and retrieved a battered-looking tape player that Ted had found him, it had to be as old as Dani was but it still worked. He pressed _play_ and the familiar voice of the zen master filled the car. Something about one plus one equalling one, contrary to popular belief, and that this _one_ equalled love. Not the algebra that Dani had learnt in school, that was for sure.

"Jesus, no!", she protested. He finally had her laughing and smiling and his heart skipped a beat. She hadn't listened to the zen master's message but Charlie hoped to tell her himself soon enough.

Back in the parking lot, way over half an hour later, she turned off the engine and looked at him. There were still cars belonging to those attending her dad's wake parked all about them but Dani didn't care any more. Charlie had been watching her tiny hands on the wheel on their drive and now he felt them weaving through his hair as she kissed him slowly. He leaned over the handbrake to reach her better, impeded sharply by his seat belt which he quickly unbuckled. Charlie was just about to hit the release button on hers and pull Dani across to sit on his lap when she broke from him. Frustrated, he sank back into his seat.

"I should go.", she said. Crews made a face. "If I don't go now I'm gonna drive us back to your place and we'll be there all night."

Crews shrugged. "Would that be so bad? Doesn't sound so bad to me."

"No. And it's all I want, too. But my mom will send out a search party...", she looked indecisive. "You said it yourself, in a few more days I can move on."

"Which means?", he was asking for some kind of promise. His patience was finally waning.

"I don't know what it means. But we'll find out." That was as much as she could give him. He'd take it. He held her face and kissed her goodnight, resisting the urge to push it further. Dani got out of the car and returned to her own. Charlie pressed his head back on the rest and gave a long sigh as she drove away.

He sat there thinking for a while, gazing out of the window in the direction of the bar but with his eyes fixed on nothing. He saw Grant and Miroslav emerge from the bar and stagger to a car, laughing and slapping one another on the back.

"I'm watching you.", Charlie whispered into the car.


	29. Chapter 29

The day of his funeral had finally arrived. Dani just wanted to fast forward to the moment her head hit her pillow that night.

She stood on the gravel path outside St. Joseph's, watching what remained of her family. The sun shone brightly, thankfully bright enough for shades. Dani wore hers to evade the glances of the congregation, the way she felt about all this was so complicated and if nobody could see her eyes, there would be nothing to betray her impossibly mixed feelings. Nobody would see her glowering anger or notice the lack of tears. If she cried again, it would be for her mom this time and nobody would know the difference. She didn't care what people thought, she just didn't want to have to try to explain it. She looked at the little woman by her side cloaked in loose black clothes and a dark pashmina. She seemed shorter than ever today. Her mom wore her sunglasses for different reasons. Dani had lent her waterproof mascara and smudge-proof eyeliner but she knew that there was no product on the market that was going to withstand her tears once they started. She would wind up looking like a panda bear, so Dani had made her bring her shades.

Her aunts and cousins had arrived. They chattered and squabbled and Dani was glad they were there. They made things seem more normal. The place was crawling with LAPD, all in their dress uniforms. Boyczech had already been over to greet Dani's mom. He would address the congregation on behalf of the force during the service. Dani was prepared to bet that the eulogy he gave in the church would be a lot less colorful than the ones she had heard in the bar. Jack Reese had known a lot of people from his neighborhood and his job, so a sizeable crowd had turned out to pay their respects. Just one person was missing and Dani scanned the crowd for a redhead. She felt more anxious about his immediate absence than anything that lay ahead today.

Crews hadn't slept well the night before, tossing and turning in the sheets he had bought especially for Dani's benefit. He had her on his mind as usual, remembering the delight and the music in her laugh as she hit the throttle in his car. Her hand wrapped around the gearshift driving him nuts. Then her lips on his and the annoyance at his belt tugging him back when all he wanted to do was lunge forwards and hold her. Sleep just wouldn't come and he felt like he had a fever. Maybe he was finally going out of his mind.

But it wasn't just her keeping him up. They were burying Jack Reese tomorrow. He couldn't say he was sorry exactly, apart from for the pain it was causing Dani and Fariba. He felt immensely frustrated that another branch of his conspiracy wall had gone cold. He had got up and wandered into his closet to stare at it, wearing nothing but his black shorts and standing with his arms wrapped around his chest, hugging himself like he wished Dani was there to do. With Nevikov dead and Rayborn gone to ground, he wasn't left with much to go on. His mind flitted back to Miroslav and Grant. It was only a hunch but he felt like they were involved somehow. There was something about the way Grant had looked at him in that bar. Like he knew Crews much better than he realized. Maybe they deserved their own branch on the conspiracy wall. They had found Jack Reese dead but apparently made little effort to follow it up, abandoning him as a John Doe. That could just be sloppy policework. Crews could just be terminally paranoid. Nevertheless, he resolved to ask Amanda Puryer to check out the two Detectives. If they had any link to Nevikov's people he would have himself a new lead.

So he had been awake brooding until the small hours and had slept in late as a consequence. He berated himself in the morning, rushing to get showered and changed. He had wanted to get to the church early to be there for Dani, to stand by her side as he had at the wake. He threw on his one and only black suit and tie over a crisp white shirt. His socks were deliberately bright blue, he couldn't bring himself to conform entirely to mourning dress for a lowlife like Jack Reese. To this day he couldn't comprehend how that man had produced a daughter like Dani.

Charlie met Bobby Stark on the way into the church grounds. Bobby wore his Class A uniform complete with hat, ribbons and a medal for bravery that Charlie had no idea he had been awarded. Charlie asked Bobby how the rest of the wake at the bar had gone down.

"Messy.", said Bobby. "Very messy." He winced as he recalled his hangover and the subsequent whining from his wife.

As they walked, Charlie took the opportunity to mention Detectives Miroslav and Grant in order to test Bobby's reaction.

Bobby stopped walking. "Charlie. Aren't you sick of trouble by now? Seriously, stay away from them - they are not good guys." He looked at his ex-partner gravely, wondering what the hell Charlie was mixed up in now. He was still on suspension for his last stunt for Christ's sake.

Before Charlie could press Bobby further, he spotted Dani looking a little lost in the crowd. All thoughts of conspiracy and revenge fled his mind and he patted Bobby on the back and made his way over to her. She wore a demure black dress with a high neckline and capped sleeves, her hair in loose waves, a bright red purse over her shoulder. Much the same thinking had inspired her purse as it had his socks. She thought she looked plain and respectful, he thought she looked incredibly hot; he hardly ever saw her dressed in anything other than pants. He stared at her coffee colored legs as he approached. She took him in, his monochrome suit making his skin look paler and his hair stand out even more than usual. Dani felt calmer with every step closer he took. They barely had a chance to say hi before Fariba rushed over and took Charlie by the elbow, pulling him towards the family to be introduced. Charlie ripped his eyes away from Dani reluctantly, seeing her shoot him an apologetic glance as Fariba marched him away. Dani followed behind them.

"Charlie, this is my older sister Mina. And her sons Dara and Majid and her daughter Farah." Charlie shook everyone's hand in turn, smiling brightly. The sons were around his age, were dark and seemed reserved and quiet but Farah, the daughter, had beautifully light eyes and she had a smirk that looked like she might be just as acerbic as her cousin Dani. "And this is my younger sister Lila, and her children Ava, Tara, Mariam and Little Jimmy." Charlie said hi to the three nieces, who all looked the same apart from their varied heights and ages, like Russian dolls, and then to Little Jimmy, who was only thirteen, clearly outnumbered by all the women and bored by the prospect of a funeral. Mariam, who was about nineteen, gave Charlie the eye. He shifted were he stood, slightly embarrassed. Tara held her baby son Cory, about nine months old, who grabbed Charlie's finger and immediately drew it to his drooling mouth. "Charlie is Dani's partner in the police force. A Detective.", Fariba explained proudly and the family all nodded and smiled.

"Do you carry a gun?", asked Little Jimmy immediately.

"Not today, pal.", Charlie replied. Little Jimmy looked distinctly unimpressed.

Charlie's head spun a little from all the new names and faces. He noticed that Fariba's sisters both had the same perceptive brown eyes as Dani and her mom and he felt them sweep over him, appraising him carefully, although he wasn't sure what for. Neither of the aunts had husbands with them or wore rings, he realized, and was later told that Mina's husband had recently died of cancer, while Lila had just divorced her husband James. Fariba and her sisters were a force to be reckoned with, they clearly ruled their families undisputed, in fact Fariba had been the only sister to have married such a dominant character as Jack. The women were in control here and it was a trait that had clearly been passed down to Dani. This was a little glimpse of what he was getting involved with.

The family broke up a little when another relative passed by. The mob of aunts and cousins dispersed a little, just leaving Dani and Charlie with Little Jimmy, Mariam and Tara and baby Cory.

"What about cuffs? Do you have any cuffs?", Little Jimmy persisted.

"Only when I'm working.", replied Charlie patiently.

"What about a nightstick? Do you have one of _those_?", cut in Mariam, pouting suggestively, getting a giggle from Tara while the innuendo passed straight over Little Jimmy's head and he looked up enthusiastically for news of a weapon he hadn't thought of.

"Okay, that's enough, leave Charlie alone.", ordered Dani, pulling him away from her cousins. They walked off and stood beneath a tree at the side of the crowd. Dani just wanted him to herself. "Sorry about my family.", she winced. "Watch out for Mari, she's on heat and she's trouble. Little Jimmy is a kleptomaniac, keep your hand on your wallet. He'll have a wrap sheet as long as your arm by the time he's twenty one. Their mother, Lila? On the look out for a second husband, keep your distance."

"Why? Because I might accidentally wind up as your new uncle?", Charlie said, amused.

"That would not be cool. You're mine, Crews.", she smiled.

He stepped closer but not too close. "I know.", he said simply, looking deep into her eyes past her shades.

She wanted to touch him. There was that smell again, lemons and fires, like her mom had identified. She wished that she could wrap herself up in him and inhale that smell all day.

"So, how are you doing?", he reached up gently and tipped up her glasses so he could see her eyes properly.

She stepped back out of his reach, not because she didn't appreciate his concern but just because she didn't want anybody to see their intimacy. "I'm okay. Having the family around is actually helping, although you wouldn't think it." They gazed over at the lively gaggle of Dani's relatives, all chattering, some laughing. They didn't look like they were assembled for a funeral and he guessed that was what she meant. Fariba was showering Little Jimmy's face with kisses and he was struggling wildly to get away.

"Has anyone noticed that _Little_ Jimmy is nearly six feet tall?", asked Charlie.

"Doesn't matter.", replied Dani. "He'll always be Little Jimmy."

It was time to go into the church. Dani looked apprehensive and Charlie put a light hand on her back. "I'll see you after, go be with your mom.", he said softly.

"You're coming to the wake, right?", she asked. She suddenly looked so vulnerable that if they were alone he would have put his arm around her. Not being able to touch her was killing him.

"Of course. Hang in there." He winked at her and she briefly touched his stomach, the way she had outside his house that night he got drunk with Ted. It was like she was touching his very core. He watched her walking away and cursed himself for noticing how good her ass looked in that dress.

/

Charlie hadn't been inside a real church since before he went to jail. Rachel Seybolt's christening, it must have been. He had visited the prison chapel plenty when he was inside, but he didn't think that counted since he would go there more for refuge than to seek spiritual guidance. That was before he discovered the path to zen.

He stood next to Bobby, who sang the hymns loudly and seemed to know his way around a Catholic service. Charlie could just about see Dani standing next to Fariba in one of the front pews. He willed her to be okay.

The service was long, involved, and tedious as far as Dani was concerned. Her father had never been a church-goer, was not remotely upstanding in any Christian sense and yet would defend the Church and the pope until death. Dani's mom was Muslim but in the loosest possible way. So really Dani grew up without any religious grounding at all, they weren't that kind of family and she just wasn't that kind of person. Even Charlie's zen mutterings baffled her. Dani smirked at Little Jimmy, who was rhythmically kicking the back of the pew that his sisters Tara and Ava sat on. He saw Dani laughing and shot her a grin back.

Fariba was silent throughout the service. Even through the eulogy; Dani had thought that would prove too much for her, but no. She held it together and stood up straighter as Boyczech piled praise on Jack Reese, Dani was sure she grew half an inch. She liked hearing it, the bullshit about what a great man he was, the good he did, how he served his community. She guessed maybe it helped her mom make sense of it all, made her think that for all the crap he put her through, there were people out there benefitting. That had to be it. It was kind of twisted but Fariba had always believed in the bigger picture. Dani had reverted to feeling numb, she was determined that her father would not affect her any longer.

It wasn't until the pallbearers, her cousins Majid and Dara and the rest of them LAPD, had taken the casket out to the hearse and the congregation spilled back out into the light that Fariba crumpled a little. The finality of it. Dani put a protective arm around her mother and walked her on slowly, taking the lead. The crowd trailed out behind them to the graveside and gathered in rings around the hole in the earth.

Fariba's first sob was the tremor that started the avalanche. Dani concentrated on birds sitting in the tree on the other side of the churchyard. Before long Mina and Lila were crying too, followed swiftly by Dara, Ava, Tara and Mariam. Even Little Jimmy shed a tear as the casket was lowered and Dani pulled him to her with her free arm, effectively holding both her mother and her youngest cousin upright. Dani just bowed her head, as did Charlie several rows behind her, and most of the other LAPD representatives. Tidwell looked on, watching Dani comfort her family and he couldn't believe that she was nothing to do with him anymore. Dani braced her body against her mother's shaking and somehow absorbed it until Fariba was all cried out. Fariba straightened up finally, turned to Dani who couldn't help but laugh at the streaks of black running out over her cheeks from the bottom of her shades. Dani retrieved Kleenex from her purse and mopped at her mom's face, replacing her shades when she had removed the worst of it. Fariba kissed Dani's cheek.

The family each tossed a handful of earth onto the submerged casket, the sound of it raining down on the wood stayed with Dani and became her abiding memory of the whole ceremony. The crowd began to disperse, back to their cars or into small clusters to talk. Little Jimmy caught up with Crews, discovering his car, and demanded that Lila allow him to catch a ride back to Fariba's house with him. Charlie may not have any weapons but at least he was good for something.

Fariba watched as the woman she recognized as 'the Marie' stood with her eyes closed for a few moments then sloped away alone. She was tempted to confront her before she could leave but then compared the lonely figure she cut with her own position at the centre of a rowdy but loving family and found that she had nothing to gain through a fight now.

Charlie asked Little Jimmy to wait for him by his car. Tidwell stood beneath a gnarly tree where he had intercepted Dani's path back to her car.

"Can we talk?", Tidwell asked her.

"It's not a great time, Captain.", snipped Dani.

"I just wanted to say sorry. For everything. I screwed up, Dani.", he pleaded.

"Big time.", she agreed.

"Would you just look at me a second? Take your glasses off.", he said.

"Is that an order, Captain?", she asked defiantly.

"Jesus, Dani, no. I...just wanted to...I...", Tidwell stammered. She wasn't going to make this easy for him.

Crews arrived behind Dani. He stood close enough that she could feel his warmth at her back. "Everything okay here?", he asked, his voice hard. He stood a good foot clear of Dani's head, towering over her, protective and jaw on edge. His fierce eyes burned a hole in Tidwell.

"Everything's fine, Crews.", replied Dani.

"I just wanted to pass on my condolences.", said Tidwell. It wasn't what he had wanted to say at all but he felt backed into a corner by Dani's bodyguard. What he wanted was to speak with her alone.

"Thank you Captain", replied Dani.

"Yes. Thank you Captain. That's very kind.", chimed Charlie. He challenged his boss silently.

Tidwell made a fist, his knuckles turning white. Since when did they speak with one voice? Who the fuck did Crews think he was? He wanted to rip his head off.

After a few tense moments where the two men locked eyes and Dani could practically feel Charlie's chest burning through her, Tidwell recognized that he was beaten. For now. He shook his head bitterly and walked away.

Charlie stayed where he was, staring after him long after Tidwell had turned his back on them.


	30. Chapter 30

The wake was held at Dani's mom's house. A few of the LAPD officers who attended the funeral came back to the house to raise a final toast to Jack and bid farewell to his widow, many of them had already said their goodbyes at the bar earlier that week and most of them still had sore heads to prove it. Dani milled around, showing people to the kitchen where the food and drink was laid out, occasionally being gripped tightly by the shoulder when someone tried to say something profound or supportive. She eyed the bottles of beer on ice in a pail on the counter. She would kill for a drink. But she was never going there again, she told herself.

She saw Tidwell and some of the brass across the room. He had tried to make amends at the church but she had shut him down and Charlie had chased him away. She knew she would have to make peace with him eventually, but it would be a frosty kind of peace. Most of the other people at the wake were relatives, members of her aunts' huge families, and friends of her parents whom she hadn't seen since she was a child. Charlie was by the window with her mom, who was showing off her new friend to her aunt Mina. Her mom had really latched on to him in the last few days and she didn't quite know how he had managed it. She guessed that it made a change for her mother to have a dependable man around, she wouldn't have been used to it. Dani knew better than anyone the comfort that his strength and his calm could bring.

She saw Charlie touch her mom's arm and stoop to her ear, probably saying something kind to her. Fariba reached out and squeezed his hand, looking moved. The sight of him taking care of her mother touched a soft part of Dani that she normally kept buried deep inside, clad in armour. She knew that he wasn't just sucking up to her, he seemed to care. This in turn ignited a fire in a baser part of her, giving her sensations that she was much more familiar with indulging. She stared at him from across the room, not unlike the way she had stared at him in the orange grove that day from behind Bodner's windshield. Lust _and_ love at the same time was all new and it was totally overwhelming.

She approached the huddle of her nearest and dearest, which now apparently included Charlie as one of their number. "Crews, could I speak with you a moment?", she asked politely. He looked up affably. Dani gestured 'over there' with her head.

He excused himself and followed her obediently, feeling her tugging at the sleeve of his jacket as if she was in a hurry. Tidwell watched them go from the other side of the room and took a jealous slug of his drink. As they made their way from the other end of the cluster of people dressed in black, Dani's grasp on Charlie's sleeve slipped down until she was pulling him along by the thumb of his right hand. He wondered what was up.

She suddenly stopped sharply and almost hurled him through a door which turned out to be the bathroom, locked the door behind them and pressed him up against the wall with a smirk on her face.

He was being ambushed again, just like in his kitchen. He did not mind at all. She had hold of his tie, pulling him down to her hot mouth until she could reach him properly and wrap her elbows about his head. She kissed him with an unparalleled fervor, having absolutely reached her limit in holding back.

He reciprocated enthusiastically, grateful to get her alone at last after the past days of duty and the sombre mood at the church this morning. She bunched his shirt at his shoulders and tore at his jacket, pulling it off his arms and leaving it spilled on the floor. It became clear to Charlie that she hadn't brought him in there just to make out. He slipped out from between her and the wall and used the distance between them to try and clear his mind for just a second. She didn't let up though, reaching forward, hooking two fingers under his belt and yanking him back against her by his pants. He sank back onto her lips helplessly and pushed her against the wall.

Her hands were all over him and he couldn't think straight. She had kissed his breath away but he got his words out eventually. "Dani, wait. _Wait_. In the bathroom at your dad's funeral. _Really?!_"

"Crews, quit stalling and fuck me.", she ordered, loosening his tie and pulling his shirt from his pants. She was through with his cautious bullshit.

There were not many men on the planet who could resist such a command. He certainly wasn't one of them. Charlie was a little taken aback at her directness, but he couldn't argue. He had been struggling all day with thoughts he felt were inappropriate to be having at a funeral and now it seemed that he wasn't the only one. They went back to kissing roughly and he started to hitch up her dress, nearly swooning at the sensation of the bare legs he had been fixated with all day finally under his fingers.

He had now brushed her underwear with his thumbs and realized that he was reaching the point of no return. "Don't you want to wait until we can do this properly?", he panted.

"Crews. What is '_properly_'? If you spend your life waiting for everything to be perfect you'll wait a long time. We'll be dry humping like a couple of teenagers in my mom's guest room forever.", she watched him smiling at this but she was serious. "You may as well still be in Pelican Bay, fantasizing about what you'd do if you ever got out. What the hell happened to _being in the moment, _Charlie?"

She was right. And she had now unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and she had her hand in his pants stroking him through his shorts. Just in case he needed any further convincing.

He closed in on her with a serious look on his face and she smiled because she knew she had won. But the purpose with which he crushed her against the bathroom wall to keep her there wiped the victory from her lips and almost winded her. Dani gazed at him, eyes open while they kissed, watching him frown uncharacteristically as he concentrated, running his hands up her thighs once more and teasing her through her panties before he started to slowly tug them down. She bit at his neck as he bent to free her legs of them.

Charlie was now truly in the moment. This wasn't how he had wanted it to be at all but he couldn't stop himself. He guessed the last week or so had been foreplay enough for both of them. Dani stepped out of her underwear as it hit the floor and he kicked her feet apart like he would when he was arresting and cuffing a perp. She hadn't seen him like this before and she liked it.

Everything was happening very fast and they were pawing at each other and breathing heavily through bouts of hurried kissing. She had to remind herself not to leave marks on his neck; although her mom approved of Charlie this was still a funeral after all. He was attempting to thumb down his shorts but not making a great job of it, distracted as he was by the lips he had spent months staring at, so she helped free him and swung her right leg around his hip to goad him on. Suddenly everything slowed, they stopped kissing, opened their eyes and just stared at one another. As he entered her little by little they both exhaled audibly, both their mouths dropping open in something like awe, relief filling the air in the small bathroom until the excitement flooded back and they started to move more vigorously. It was a little awkward, made all the more difficult by their height difference, but they were determined to find a way. He held her up by the ass, each stroke pushing her further up the wall until the toes on her left foot entirely lost contact with the floor.

Charlie thought he was going to pass out through sheer pleasure, his knees felt weak and his mind went blank, but lust took over his muscles and maintained his motion. Little gasps escaped them both, issuing sobs of voice that they tried to stifle against one another's necks or into each other's ears unsuccessfully, threatening to give them away. Charlie didn't want the entire wake to know what was taking place in the bathroom. He tried to kiss her quiet but their momentum kept stealing her mouth away from his every time their hips clashed and she jerked upwards. He shushed her and she grinned but she was getting louder as he got quicker and he couldn't stop and he didn't want to, so he clamped his left hand over her open mouth until that too slipped and she wound up sucking just his ring finger, holding it gently between her teeth to keep from yelling out.

Dani could feel the tightness growing in her pelvis and dug her fingernails into Charlie's shoulders to brace herself. She thought she could hear someone shuffling and clearing their throat on the other side of the door and started to worry herself. Disgracing herself at her father's funeral would be just typical of her. She reached out under Charlie and leaned to the left across the vanity unit, turning on the faucet and clumsily knocking bottles of handwash and her mom's shampoo into the sink, giving the illusion at least that someone was busy freshening up in there instead of getting laid. Charlie held her tightly as she fidgeted, not letting up, his cheeks flushed and tiny beads of sweat damping his hair at his temples. She wound the other leg around him now, bringing them together tighter and restricting his movement but intensifying things further. Now that their bodies were a little steadier, she could kiss him better, lifting them both off the floor and into the clouds. She felt warmth spreading into her stomach and through her limbs, followed closely by a bolt of lightening crackling all over her body, swallowing a shriek and stuffing her face against his neck and murmuring his name against his skin until the sensation cooled in blissful waves that pulsed in time with Charlie's movements. She pacified gradually. Feeling her contract and flip and lose control set Charlie off and his legs buckled under their combined weight and the intense release that motored through him, momentarily deafening him and bleaching his field of vision a luminous white. He slumped against her and the wall, panting, while Dani held them up until he recovered enough to regain his footing.

She looked up at him mischievously. "If that wasn't '_properly_' then I can't wait for next time.", she sighed. He laughed at her. Now that he appeared to be able to stand up on his own she took his face in her hands and kissed him long and gentle.

Months and months of wanting her, painful sleepless nights and these last couple of weeks of overt mutual longing, frustrated sighs and heavy glances had condensed into eight frantic minutes in a bathroom and now that it was done he didn't regret one second. He did wish that they were in bed so that he could lay with her and tell her for real what his heart contained but he guessed that she had known from the second he gave her that orange in the hospital room.

They helped each other straighten up, fixing their clothes and their hair, him smoothing down the creases in her dress lovingly, her helping him on with his jacket and re-knotting his tie.

"You better go out first.", she said to him looking at the door.

"I don't want to leave you.", he replied, surprised at himself and the way he was feeling. For a second he thought he wanted to cry.

She kissed him softly again and pushed him away gently, turning to the mirror as he unlocked the door and slipped out to face a large, bald man with a beard who hopped from foot to foot nervously looking as if he badly needed to pee.

"Um, I'd give her five minutes if I were you, she's a little upset. She's just composing herself, it's been a tough day.", Charlie said to the man with a '_you know how it is face'. _

The bald man nodded. He guessed that the strange sounds he had heard coming from behind that door _could_ have been someone crying. He tried not to pee himself.

/

Charlie grabbed a beer from the kitchen and went and sat alone in a chair by the window to gather his thoughts. He was soon joined by Little Jimmy, who was trying to pressure him into swiping him a beer too.

"No can do, you're thirteen and I'm a cop.", Charlie shrugged his shoulders at the boy.

"Pussy", muttered Jimmy as he sloped off to try someone else.

If Charlie was a vengeful man, which he was, he guessed he could take great delight in what had just happened between himself and Jack Reese's daughter in the bathroom at the great man's funeral. He wondered if he was looking down, or up at them, in his case, in impotent paternal fury. But Crews couldn't feel anything like malicious pleasure directed at Jack over finally having made Dani his, he was too overwhelmed by love for her to let it be tainted by something so ugly. He considered ripping down his conspiracy wall when he got home; he felt like he no longer needed it.

"Charlie,", Fariba stood in front of him looking like she wanted to scold him. Charlie hoped the bald man outside the bathroom hadn't squealed. "I don't think I've seen you eating. Come with me right now and get some food." The small, feisty woman grabbed his hand and pulled him across the room just as her daughter had half an hour before. They crossed paths with Dani on the way and the two partners exchanged intimate smiles as they passed, parts of their bodies still humming in the afterglow. "He hasn't eaten!", Fariba exclaimed at her daughter as if this was an intolerable situation that had to be rectified immediately. Dani laughed as she dragged him off. This Reese woman hustled him into the the kitchen instead of the bathroom, thankfully, and started loading him a plate of food, explaining what everything was and what the ingredients and methods of cooking were.

Fariba stood over him as he ate, asking how he liked each dish she had prepared and whether she could get him any more. Charlie ate a vast amount, suddenly very hungry despite every mouthful being taken under the watchful gaze of the chef. She was delighted with him. She loved a good eater. When he was nearly done, he looked at her pensively.

"Fariba. Could I ask you something?", he said shyly.

"Of course, my boy. Anything. Oh. You want recipes? They're very precious...", Fariba looked conflicted, like she wouldn't be able to divulge such information to him, however much she liked him.

"No, it's not your recipes. But it is about something precious..._someone_ precious."

Fariba's eyes widened.

"I was wondering if you would give me your permission to date your daughter?", he spat it out, finally.

Fariba squealed and thrust her arms around Charlie, flattening his plate and what was left on it against his suit between their bodies. She hugged him so tightly and her center of gravity was so low that she nearly cut him in two. Charlie took this as a 'yes' and grinned at her when she finally released him. She looked down and gasped in horror at the plate and the food stains on his jacket and whisked him over to the sink to start dabbing at him with a cloth and spray cleaner. Charlie enjoyed the motherly fussing.

"Does she know, my Dani?", Fariba asked excitedly as she scrubbed the tip of his tie.

"Kind of.", he replied. "Well, she has an idea...I think."

Fariba beamed, pleased for the break from the funereal mood, pleased that what she had hoped for regarding her daughter and Charlie was coming to pass and pleased that he had been so respectful to ask her permission. It suddenly struck her that she really was the head of the household now; in all the months she had lived without Jack, nothing had brought it home to her like Charlie's question had.

Dani walked in on the scene, frowning at the sight of her mother all over Charlie and the two of them smiling manically at each other.

Fariba stopped scrubbing him. "I dropped food on him.", she shrugged apologetically and withdrew, winking at Charlie and quickly making to leave in order to leave them alone together.

Dani watched her shuffle past and looked quizzically at Charlie. "What the hell just happened here?", she asked, bewildered.

He stepped closer to her. "I just asked your mom if I could date you."

Dani's jaw dropped. "Oh my god. You did not." Seeing that he wasn't kidding her eyes widened in just the same way her mother's had. "What are we, fifteen?", she cried. "Wait. Then she threw food at you?"

Charlie took her hand and shook his head. "She's all for it. She made this squeaking sound."

Dani knew the sound he was referring to, she had last heard her make it when Fariba won an entire month's groceries in a prize draw at the local store.

"She's probably through there now telling my aunts and the entire LAPD.", Dani groaned.

Charlie pulled her close and she looped her arms around him under his jacket. He was wet from Fariba's cloth but she didn't mind. They stayed like this in silence for a while. Charlie wondered if she was going to take him back to the bathroom.

Just then Tidwell walked in, catching them in the same stance that had made his blood run cold in the orange grove and again at the hospital. It made him feel sick. He couldn't recall the last time she had hugged him like that.

"Excuse me. I just came to get a drink." he said formally, taking a beer and turning on his heel to leave quickly, his mood blacker than ever.

Dani kept hold of Charlie, completely ignoring Tidwell. She closed her eyes and listened to his heart ticking.


	31. Chapter 31

Dani and Charlie split up reluctantly and rejoined the crowd of well-wishers in her mother's home. Dani prayed they would all leave soon. Her mother walked over, trying to act casual and disguise her glee, to find out if things were now official between _her_ Dani and _her_ Charlie.

"Mom, would you just calm down?", moaned Dani.

"Can't I be happy that my daughter finally found a decent man?" Fariba was almost offended.

"Mom, it's not like we got engaged.", Dani maintained.

"Not yet, no. But you're not getting any younger, Dani..."

"Jesus, mom! Enough! Charlie shouldn't have said anything to you, he's just too polite for his own good.", Dani was going to kill him for opening his big mouth. She would never hear the end of this.

"You keep hold of him. He's a good boy.", Fariba warned.

"Mom, _I know _what he is. But he's also my partner. That kind of thing's not allowed at work and you're now shooting your mouth off in a room full of my superior officers and dad's friends." Dani lowered her voice but spoke pointedly.

"Oh.", said Fariba, wide-eyed and looking about her conspiratorially in case anyone had overheard.

"Yeah -_ 'oh'_.", Dani said nodding at her mother and raising her eyebrows.

"Can I at least tell your aunts?", Fariba tried, still excited.

"Mom, can you just give _us_ some time to get used to things first?", Dani whined, her head spinning. It was precisely for this reason that she usually kept most things from her mother.

Fariba relented. "Okay. But can you see your aunt Lila? _This_ is why you need to put a ring on his finger. I will stop this." Fariba gestured over to the sofa, where Lila was sitting very close to Charlie, tossing her hair and looking enthralled by whatever it was he was saying to her.

There was nothing Fariba liked more than being trusted with a secret. Now that she had a mission too she was in her element. She patted Dani's arm in agreement and shuffled off to protect her future son-in-law's honor from her sisters' talons. Dani sighed and shook her head.

/

Tidwell saw Dani's mother leave her alone and knew that Crews was occupied with the brassy-looking woman on the couch. This was his chance. He watched her make towards the kitchen and he followed her, looking to see if Crews noticed.

"So, how have you been?", he said to her as her back was turned, picking at some of her mother's food.

Dani turned around and looked past him at the door.

"He's not there, Dani.", referring to Crews. "You're going to have to talk to me sooner or later. I'd rather it was now."

"Tidwell, what is it you want from me?", she exhaled heavily.

He wanted to turn back the clock and for things to be just as they were several months ago when he realized he was falling in love with her and he still felt like there was a chance she might feel the same way. But he couldn't say that. "Just to know that you're okay. That maybe one day _we_ could be okay.", he said instead.

"I'm fine. It's been a tough couple of weeks but I've had help and I'm okay."

"Help from Crews?", he cut in.

Dani sighed. "Tidwell, you and I need to move on. It's over. If we're going to be friends, if we're going to work together, then we need some boundaries. You need to back off, you don't get to ask me personal questions."

"So you're together now?" He hadn't listened.

Dani wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to say it out loud just to hear how it sounded. But he had threatened Charlie before and she knew how jealous he was, so she wouldn't risk it. "No more together than we've ever been.", she twisted it. "You're just gonna have to get used to that if you and I are gonna be friends."

"Will you come back to work next week?", he asked.

"I guess. But I want my partner back Tidwell. It's a deal-breaker. How is the investigation going?"

"Nearly done.", he said quietly.

"And what have they found? Will Crews get his suspension lifted?" He couldn't know how desperate she was to hear the answer.

"That guy always seems to land on his feet.", Tidwell said begrudgingly. Dani breathed relief, they obviously had no evidence against Charlie for Roman's murder.

"Tidwell, that guy spent twelve years of his life locked in a cell.", she reminded him. "I wouldn't describe him as naturally lucky."

Tidwell begged to differ. He was extremely lucky. He just knew that Crews had been out of line over Roman. He had mixed feelings over the fact that he had done it to save Dani. Stark and Seever had closed ranks to protect Crews and had been very careful not to incriminate him. The autopsy on Roman had shown signs of a fight as per Crews' account but it was inconclusive regarding a cause of death, the balance of probability said that the bullets pumped into his head and heart by someone other than the Detective were responsible and Tidwell had no testimony from anyone to claim any different. They were going to have to let him come back to work with a reprimand before his lawyer issued legal proceedings. He had to admit that his department's solve rate was down dramatically, he needed all his Detectives back on the job.

"I'll be speaking to his lawyer tomorrow.", ceded Tidwell. "But if he so much as thinks about stepping out of line again, he's out. I'm watching him."

Dani smiled at him. Things were getting back on track.

"I'll make sure he behaves.", she promised.

"And tell him to drop the guard dog act, doesn't suit him.", Tidwell talked tough but he did so to hide the fact that there were certain aspects of Charlie Crews that he found very intimidating and he didn't want to have to tiptoe past the guy's desk every day at work.

"Sure thing. Thanks Tidwell.", Dani replied.

Tidwell had now done what he came to the wake to do and considered it time to leave. She saw him out of the kitchen door, him pausing for a fraction of a second wanting to kiss her cheek out of habit but realizing sadly that those days were gone.

/

While Dani and Tidwell were in the kitchen, Fariba came to a halt at the sofa. Her body English meant business but her eyes still smiled. Charlie and Lila looked up at her and even for a tiny woman, her presence seemed to loom over them. She was holding a large leather-bound book.

"Lila, move over. I have something I want to show Charlie.", she ordered.

Lila frowned and asked her older sister what the hell she thought she was doing, her and Charlie were just fine as they were, all in Farsi. Fariba frowned back and told Lila she should be ashamed of herself, acting like a slut at a wake, and Charlie was way too young for her anyway. Charlie looked on, amused as they babbled, watching Fariba scowling at her sister and eventually winning whatever the argument was about. Lila shifted over so that Fariba could sit down between them, physically putting a stop to anything that Lila thought she had going on with her daughter's beau.

"I have photos. You want to see?", Fariba asked Charlie, who nodded enthusiastically, glad for a respite in Lila's attentions. Dani's aunt had placed her hand on his knee at one point and he wasn't sure what he should do about it.

Fariba flipped through the pages as Lila rolled her eyes. She let him see Dani's baby photos and glanced at him approvingly as he made all the right noises but she had really retrieved the album because there were a lot of pictures from Jack's days in the LAPD and she wanted to reminisce with her guests. She had only started with Charlie because she wanted to break up his chat with Lila.

Charlie felt a little uncomfortable flicking through the record of Jack's life like this but he humored Fariba. The photos of her and Dani when they were younger touched his heart but he felt awkward having to comment on snaps of Jack at the training academy, at parades and LAPD socials because he had despised the guy and he knew how he had treated Dani and her mom. To make things easier, he helped her identify other people in the room whose younger selves also featured in the photos. Commander Boyczech was in quite a few, having rose through the ranks with Jack, and Fariba tore up an old envelope to mark the pages so that she could show him later. There were pictures of training days, Christmas balls and several pages of photos devoted to an Alsatian dog that Jack was clearly close to. Fariba had been as pretty as Dani when she was younger and he told her so, earning yet more adoration from his new pal. Jack's hair went from salt and pepper to gray and then to silver white throughout the pages as the years advanced. Lila yawned and got up from the sofa to go check on Little Jimmy who was messing around out front having swiped somebody's cigarettes and was now trying to find a light. Suddenly Charlie froze. He asked Fariba a question about the photo above the three he was really interested in, so that she paused a while on the page long enough for him to get a good look. Jack was photographed at some kind of awards event, in the not too distant past by the look of the clothes the hair and his age in the picture, presenting a framed certificate to a younger officer. A younger Detective Paul Grant. His eyes flipped to the opposite page and saw Jack posing for the camera with his arms around both Grant _and_ a very young Miroslav. The next picture showed a group of guys stood around drinking and smoking, looking convivial; amongst them Reese, Miroslav and Grant were sharing a joke. They knew each other, quite obviously. But they had failed to identify him at the dock, despite the fact that Jack had not been dead all that long and his cerebral bullet wound being located above the hairline, not obscuring his features. Charlie went quiet but Fariba didn't notice, continuing to commentate on the pages of photos.

Dani approached, her face dropping in horror as soon as she saw what her mother was brandishing. She knew that album contained images of her in diapers and not much else. She was mortified and she was going to kill Fariba, it had taken her mom like five minutes to embarrass her in front of Charlie, she couldn't help herself.

"Hey Dani, I would have imagined that you were a cute baby but I never expected so much puppy fat.", teased Charlie with a huge grin, putting Miroslav and Grant to the back of his mind.

"Oh, she was a big baby. She never stopped eating!", Fariba chimed in.

"Just stop right there, Crews, if you know what's good for you.", Dani narrowed her eyes at him.

He heeded her warning, turning to Fariba, thanking her for her hospitality and explaining that he needed to leave. His head had started to hurt and he wanted to get out of there to think about those photos. Fariba looked disappointed but made him promise that he was coming back soon and repeated that he was invited to dinner the following weekend. She kissed him like he was setting off on an overseas voyage and finally let him go, telling him that Dani would see him out with a mischievous glint in her eye.

It took them another half hour to say goodbye to Mina, Majid, Dara, Farah, Ava, Tara and Cory and finally make it to the door. They found Lila yelling at Little Jimmy outside, but she stopped when she saw them and insisted on giving Charlie a warm kiss goodbye, much to Dani's amusement. Charlie shook Little Jimmy's hand and advised him to plead the fifth amendment, leaving them to resume their mother-son argument by the rose bed.

They walked out to Charlie's car, which was parked on the street behind a line of others. He contemplated telling her about his discovery in the family photo album but he thought better of it, Dani had been through enough for one day. She noted that he was uncharacteristically quiet and projected her sadness that he was leaving onto him, assuming that this was the reason for his taciturn demeanor.

"So I straightened things out with Tidwell.", she said in order to cheer him up as he walked over to the driver's side of his car. She stopped at the passenger side.

Charlie looked up, annoyed that Tidwell had gotten past him to her in the first place.

She saw him react possessively. "It was fine. He seems to think that you'll be allowed back to work pretty soon. They have nothing on you, Charlie." She smiled.

He smiled back at her across the hood of his car. "So we'll be partners again?"

"Yeah. We'll be partners and then some." She wanted to let him know that today had not been a one off. "We'll have to be careful at work. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to keep my hands to myself." she looked at him seductively.

"...because I'm so handsome and charming?", he joked.

"Because I'm falling in love with you. In fact, I'm probably already there.", she said simply, suddenly serious, surprised at herself saying the words so freely.

Charlie held on to the car for balance. He couldn't speak for a second because he was feeling his heart swell in his chest and a small lump develop in his throat. He gathered himself.

"About time, Reese. I've been here for a while now.", he replied shyly. He saw her grin in response. "Want to get into the car so I can show you?"

"No. I'm done with sex in confined spaces. I want to do things_ properly_.", she turned the tables on him.

"So come home with me, I have plenty of room.", he urged her, his mouth suddenly very dry.

"Not today, I need to get these people out of my mom's house." This thing with Crews had taught her all about delayed gratification. She had never had the patience for it before but if today in the bathroom was anything to go by, she had decided she could now see the benefits.

"But soon?", he asked. She was going to be the death of him.

"Soon. And properly.", she purred. And as much as she wanted to kiss him goodbye, to kiss him blind and to kiss him all over, she managed to back off slowly and then walk away.

He stood there, dumbfounded, ecstatic and shaking, and watched her disappear back into the house.


End file.
